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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26521708">Daemon Lover</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/imstillprettyodd/pseuds/paintbox'>paintbox (imstillprettyodd)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Led Zeppelin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>1970s, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Latino Character, Rock Stars, Travel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:28:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>59,341</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26521708</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/imstillprettyodd/pseuds/paintbox</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>1973. There's something about angel wings and white feathers on the bathroom floor. Reina doesn't know what she's gotten into.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jimmy Page/Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Summoning at the Rainbow</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There go Reina's legs, collapsing from a dark look that settles and burrows in the back of her skull until she feels unclothed, skinned like a wild animal. Jimmy Page sets his glass on the table and murmurs to the man next to him. His eyes never leave her, dancing and moving and blurring with two other girls at the back of the bar. This is full-seeing. His table is roped-off, hidden, but her eyes had swept across the red tint of the walls earlier, she found him: pale, moonfaced, dark-haired.</p><p>Momentum and self lost, she stumbles out of her rhythm and the middle girl gives her a warm hand, sets her right. She flashes her glittered lids back at Reina. </p><p>"Looks like you've caught someone's eye. I'm jealous," the soft fabric of the girl's scarf swishes against her. "And his friend is coming to collect."</p><p>Reina turns and her hips follow. A bearded man steps toward her with a small smile lifting his face. She continues to dance, watching as he finally reaches her, his alcohol-warmth overwhelming.</p><p>"Hello, beauty. How are you?" He swipes his thumb across his lip and fetches a cigarette from his pocket.</p><p>"I'm fine," Reina huffs, then smiles. This is the moment she prepared for since she set foot in LA. This is the moment she conjured up in her head as she flicked through the flashy music magazines. This is why she's here, dancing with these girls, hoping to mesmerize and delight and seduce for a spot in the Zeppelin magic kingdom.</p><p>"Jimmy Page would like to meet you," he says, "I'm Ricardo, by the way, if you'll follow me." He offers his unoccupied hand. Her body suddenly stops. The girls beside her pause and watch, clutching to each other with sweating grasps. Reina's forgotten their names since they told her outside the Rainbow. Her breath comes soft from her mouth and she gives him her palm. He winks, folding his fingers with hers. The two of them file from the makeshift dance-floor and her belly begins to sting.</p><p>The passageway is lined with pretty people, like a garden lined with flowers. The music is loud, their voices are loud, and her footsteps sound amplified on the hard floors. She moves her gaze from the tables to see him in front of her, shrouded in crimson shine and a pale suit jacket. The curls of his hair fall and rest at his shoulders. He stares and her insides crumble like Ozymandias, king of kings. She's unraveling again. Her blood feels as if it's left her body and migrated to his open, waiting hand.</p><p>"I saw you from across the room. Your dancing is hypnotic," Jimmy's voice is nasally, light. Dizziness rattles her. "Come and sit with me."</p><p>Reina slides into the booth beside him and receives the flavor of his scent and the heat of his body. He wraps a long arm over the headrest of the seat, allowing his fingers to brush onto her bare shoulder. He smells like childhood sweets, citrus tones, and something darker, some deep cologne that buries in her brain. She looks up at him.</p><p>"Would you like something to drink?" He turns and she's able to see the soft pink curve of his lips and his skin stretched taut along his cheekbones and jaw. Her thigh makes contact with the satin of his pants. A thousand words desire to jumble from her mouth.</p><p>"A screwdriver," Reina says and Jimmy smiles, solidly. He's more beautiful in real life than on the page of a magazine; his skin porcelain-fine and his eyes dark green and soft.</p><p>Ricardo appears once again, this time to take Jimmy's order of a second glass of Jack, and Reina's screwdriver. He saunters off through the crowd. Jimmy turns his body fully towards Reina, away from the men and women sitting on his other side, faces she doesn't recognize from <em>Creem</em>. She watches his eyes move across her.</p><p>"You move as if you're in the thrall of passion," Jimmy comments. The brush of his thumb on her arm sends goosebumps racing.</p><p>"I am," Reina replies. "It's the freedom of the body and the mind. Like," she raises her hand, holds an invisible string in the air between them, "I've let that inhibition go. I'm only myself when I dance, nothing more."</p><p>"There are men in Turkey who whirl to be closer to God. One hand raised toward heaven, and the other toward the earth. You remind me of them."</p><p>Reina's legs part and she looks down at the nail polish on her toes: sparkling gold, "Thank you."</p><p>"Where did you learn?" There's an angle in his voice. She takes it as her cue to glance back up at him.</p><p>"I danced at school." But her show tonight was nothing like the ballroom lessons her teachers taught. He smiles again. She feels as if she's being tested. She scans his face, gaze moving from the soft slope of his nose to the wrinkles that fan his eyes when he grins. Her mouth moves, "You're the reason I'm here."</p><p>His smile grows wider. "Really? Well, then you've got what you wanted, haven't you? What's your name?"</p><p>Ricardo returns with the drinks, setting them down on the table and filling in Reina's other side. She immediately starts to nurse the screwdriver, leaning to place the small, black straw between her lips. The initial taste burns. She hopes Jimmy doesn't notice her surprise.</p><p>"Reina," her tongue presses soft and quick to the roof of her mouth.</p><p>The ice cubes clink in Jimmy's short glass like wind-chimes. "A perfect fit." She is about to thank him again, silly with compliments, when he removes his left hand from behind her and sets it on her thigh. "Where are you from?"</p><p>The contact makes her pull the inside of her cheek between her molars. She can see only his fingers, nothing more, from the bandage covering his palm. Her tan hand falls onto his and she stares from under her bangs in a question.</p><p>"Fence accident. My ring finger is out of commission. So the Forum show had to be moved to Wednesday. But we're playing there tomorrow," he explains. "Are you from California?"</p><p>The music coming over the speakers changes to Elvis. She stops herself from singing along, <em>Are you lonesome tonight, do you miss me tonight?</em> "No, I'm just here for the summer. I live in Tucson."</p><p>He hums and closes the space dividing their bodies, his hand drifting, rough and rubbing up her thigh. "Do you like it there?"</p><p>"Tucson?"</p><p>"Yes, Reina." Jimmy's lips sweep and press against her warm shoulder.</p><p>"It's nothing like LA . . ."</p><p>"Nothing's like LA," Jimmy affirms, tracking kisses up her skin to her neck. He opens his mouth and his wet tongue tastes her. Reina can't breathe, but it's the most wonderful moment of breathlessness she's ever felt. Her head tilts to the right, chin grazing the soft waves of his hair. She sees clouds behind her eyelids; feelings of lust and ecstasy, fueled by his Pantene-scent and working tongue, bloom in her chest.</p><p>"Oh, you're busy, Pagey," someone shouts from the other side of the table. "Not surprised."</p><p>Reina's eyes open. She hadn't even realized she closed them. Jimmy gives a muted sound and separates from her to observe the bare-chested figure of Robert Plant place his hands on his hips.</p><p>"I was just about to ask where I might find some company, but I see you've already caught some," Robert pushes back a bundle of curls with his elegant hand. His eyes focus on Reina and a smile causes his dimples to crease. "Hi, girlie."</p><p>"This is Reina," Jimmy says. "She's a fan."</p><p>"Right, yeah. Did you come with any others like you?"</p><p>Reina points across the bar, hoping to make up for leaving her dance partners alone, "They're over there. They said you're their favorite, by the way."</p><p>"Oh, yeah? Thank you, dear. Be seeing you," he wanders down the aisle, leaving Reina sinking into Jimmy's shoulder. His body lifts and falls with an accompanying sigh.</p><p><em>Tell me, dear, are you lonesome tonight?</em> Elvis' voice fades from the speakers, replaced by a hard-driving drum beat. Reina's limbs no longer feel heavy. Jimmy's hand still occupies her thigh, but his attentions are elsewhere: the glass in his grip. She watches the bobbing movement of his throat. Her bottom lip slides between her teeth again.</p><p>"Do you want to stay here longer?" Her voice breaks through the aching silence.</p><p>If she surprised him with her suggestion, he doesn't show it. Jimmy gestures to her drink and she finishes it in quick sips, earning a nod and the cast look his eyes send her.</p><p>"Have you ever been to the Hyatt House, Reina?" He rises from the booth, smoothing the white of his jacket with his hands. She follows, balmy and ready, cheeks flushed from the kiss and knees pressed together.</p><p>"No," she mumbles.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Ritual at the Riot House</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jimmy has a balcony with a view of the moving street below and roof-access to the pool. Reina presses her thighs into the spindles and folds her body over the edge, dangling her arms, trying to flush away the nervousness spinning in her gut. Ricardo — no Richard Cole, as Jimmy rolled his eyes and insisted — drove them to the hotel, past the moving buildings and neon lights. Jimmy had kissed her nine times in the car, over and over again, groping, seeking, his tongue in her mouth, finished finally with sweet pecks to her jaw. He liked her bangs and pushing them from her face to compliment the deep brown of her eyes or the gentle rise of her top lip when she smiled up at him.</p>
<p>"Be careful," Jimmy hums from behind Reina and she twists herself up instantly, hot wires burning through her legs with embarrassment. He stands before her with his shed jacket in his hand.</p>
<p>"Sorry," she mumbles quickly, her hands slipping on the railing. He shakes his head, grins, and gestures to the open sliding glass door. "Will you come back inside?"</p>
<p>"Yeah. It's almost unreal out here, with all the lights," she tells him and stares at the downward sweep of his shoulders as they move back into the suite. When Jimmy unlocked the door earlier she had been greeted with huge Moroccan rugs, spread across the floors, and the dull smell of once-burnt incense.</p>
<p>"I know. It's very artificial," Jimmy comments. He sets the suit jacket on the couch and wanders off into another room. Reina scans the walls, cream-toned and spotless, and the lampshades, equally immaculate, filtering warm light. She looks toward the doorway where Jimmy disappeared, and sits on the couch, suddenly feeling as if she might sully the room. With quick fingers, she unclasps her shoes and sets them beside her. Her hands find their way into her lap. This moment, silent and unknowing, is something she'll have to report to her friends when she gets back to her sister's house. She can imagine herself already on the blue bed, sprawled, the receiver in her hand while she runs through the girlish details of the night.</p>
<p>"I'm not sure which you prefer, but I'm having champagne and red wine brought up to the room," Jimmy tells her when he returns.</p>
<p>"Thank you. . ." her eyes drift to follow the imprint of his shoes on the carpet and then the rug. "Do you like the room?" He asks.</p>
<p>"Yes," she says, and he moves toward her, slow steps, one pant leg swishing against the other, and crouches by her feet. Her fingers curl into her palms. She wonders if she should touch him. He's so close, she could reach her hand out and caress his face, feel the softness of his hair, pull him to her tight so that his head rests on her breasts.</p>
<p>"I laid out all of the rugs. They make me feel more at ease here, more comfortable. And the candles," he rises once more and she turns to watch him pull the lighter from his pocket, lighting each stick like a dutiful choir boy. "Wait a moment." Jimmy lowers himself and sets one hand on her knee. She gingerly touches him back, running the pads of her fingers over the skin of his knuckles. A musky smell fills the expanse of the suite and he stands. "Do you like it, the scent?"</p>
<p>Reina nods and takes his outstretched hand, the palm soft and offering to her. She brings herself to her feet. "And what now?"</p>
<p>"Let me show you the bedroom." The floor is welcoming under her feet and she pads over the threshold into a dark room. By the light of the sitting room, she finds a king-sized bed and another closed door which must lead to a bathroom. The curtains of the balcony are drawn back, but Jimmy separates from her to close them. And suddenly, she understands the reality of the situation. She runs the toes of her right foot over her ankle and lingers by the bedposts, watching Jimmy arrange the room. He lights more candles and their glow begins to splash across the lilac pillows. He turns to her and gives a smile, preparing to say something, she's sure, but he's cut off by a knock at the suite door. "Excuse me," he tells her and she wants to melt away.</p>
<p>She places a hand on the top sheet of the bed and swallows. Dream come true. She turns around and faces a full-length mirror. With careful hands, she unties the string of her halter top and it falls limp onto her chest. The tight cotton stretches when Reina pulls it from her head and addresses her reflection, playing her mother for a moment, then her teenage self. Her mother scolds her, points a finger and scowls. Where is her dancing career that she wanted so badly? Thrown in the trash for a man? Her teenage self swoons, congratulates her, claps her hands: forget what Mamá said, this is it. She knows.</p>
<p>Jimmy's fingers are ghostly, long, slightly cold from the chilled bottle of champagne he had been holding and they curve to cradle Reina's breasts. Her back arches and her fingers forget their hold on the halter top. He teases her nipple with his right hand, stares at her furrowed brows in the mirror, and presses himself against her. "Look at yourself," he whispers into her ear and she forces a glance from under her lowered lids. An image of salaciousness speaks back to her. She rapidly shakes her head, feet stepping back and sliding over the toes of Jimmy's dark, shiny shoes. Heat rolls through her like a wave and Jimmy adjusts his hold, supporting her over the ribcage and shutting the door with one hand. He walks her to the bed and slides her down. Her feet hang like limp weights off the edge as she watches him undress, revealing skin button by button, pale and taut, sparse black hair on display beneath his collarbone. Reina reaches down to unbutton her bell-bottoms, but Jimmy makes a noise in the back of his throat that stills her.</p>
<p>The satin fabric of his shirt slides down his arms like a second skin and she wishes she could wrap herself within it. Jimmy crawls forward and leans down to lick at the soft flesh above her waistband; her muscles twitch, her pelvis rocks upward, and he peels the pants from her legs. Her body is steaming hot and the brush of his hand against her only heightens her temperature.</p>
<p>"I like these," he says in reference to her underwear, light pink and almost see-through, and slips them to the floor. Reina's legs meet and tense, but Jimmy smiles and stands once again, stripping his own slacks, pushing his own shorts from his hips to the floor of the bedroom, and stands white naked in front of her. She's only made love once before, in the bed of a cowboy's Ford, but it hurt and his skin was too rough and he wasn't sure what to do when she tugged at his hair and cried out.</p>
<p>"Jimmy," she just wants to say it, to remind herself that she is here in the present, underneath his form as he pulls his body over hers, spreads her legs with his knee and graces her with the press of his nose to her cheek.</p>
<p>The night lasts long and twists in Reina's mind. He licks her, sucks her skin into his mouth until the blood rushes to the surface like a desperate diver, and finally enters her after what seems like an hour of foreplay with an orgasm from his head lowered in the middle of her thighs. He feels purple within her. A deep color bordering on red. Reina's legs hold tighter to his lower back, forcing him further, bringing him closer, burying him and drowning him and hoping to make him feel as she feels. His breath is hot and wet and fanning her neck. His hair leaks inky in the space between their faces. Jimmy's movements are slow enough she can taste with her body what it means to be filled and absorbed.</p>
<p>Her hand clutches at the back of his head and she gives a breathy plea of: "More. . ." And Jimmy can only oblige, the joints of the bedframe groaning. Her hair, now wet at her brow with sweat, tosses against the pillows. In the brief height before she unravels and comes, Jimmy is everything. He is expansive, ancient, seeking and seeping into her mind and skin and bones and muscles. He mumbles her name, pray or mantra or spell, into her shoulder, tilts his head back as she squeezes him and parts his heavy lids to see what she looks like in the moment she leaves.</p>
<p>Reina forgets she's whole, and in the aftermath, becomes non-existent. Her body floats, her hands caught in Jimmy's damp curls and him still held inside of her. Coming apart hot and aware. Jimmy flips over with an exhausted sigh, covering them both in the top sheet of the bed. Her body is still when Jimmy kisses her. Her mind drags behind.</p>
<p>"You are lovely. Did you hear yourself? You're lovely," he murmurs and brings her to him. "You are so beautiful, Reina. Like a goddess. Otherworldly. I almost don't believe we're able to share the same time and moment." She manages to reach up and thumb at his lips, which are flaming pink with blood.</p>
<p><em>I f</em><em>eel the same about you, </em>but the words fail to leave her mouth. She traces the path of coarse hairs making up Jimmy's brow, pulls at the skin beneath his eyes, roughs her fingertips with the touch of his sideburns. He shuts his eyes, lets her groom him, and she can only smile. Her reaching hands span over his back and she tries to force him down against her. A little gasp of a breath escapes him when they make contact. With slowing pulses, sweating together into sleep, Reina feels warm and high and above the world with comfort.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Swarming at the Forum</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Led Zeppelin, tonight at the Forum. I'll be there, will you?" The man on the radio in Richard's car calls out.</p><p>Reina looks over at Jimmy with a smile. But he only raises his brows in a dismissing manner.    </p><p>"You don't like them talking about you on the radio?" Her thighs stick to the leather of the back seat. Even with the A/C on, it's steaming hot in the early summer air of the car. She tugs at the pleats of her flowered dress.</p><p>"When we first started," Jimmy explains. "It was all hype, you know? Critics didn't want to write good articles about us because they thought we were all just show."</p><p>"But you're not. They've all seen you now."</p><p>"Right, it's just a reminder of those times, Reina." His response, and the set of his hand on her thigh, makes her feel stupid. In the shower that morning, he asked her what she enjoyed doing.<em> Dancing, reading, skating . . .</em> And then he asked her age, ran his hands over the curve of her back. <em>Twenty one. A lucky age</em>, Jimmy confirmed. She asked him about his music. <em>How did you create that percussive sound with your guitar in "White Summer?"</em> <em>How did the band first meet? Who's your favorite artist?</em> She wanted to eat the words he said, stuff the soft vowels into her mouth and let the sweetness sink into her tastebuds. His eyes crinkled while he entertained her.</p><p>From the shower, he dressed slowly and gave her one of his shirts to wear while he presented the following dates for the tour. LA, San Fran, LA again, then they were heading up north, and she would be coming with him.</p><p>She looks out the car window, watching the passing drivers fade as they leave her field of vision. Her sister's going to be damn shocked when she finds Reina's handwritten note on the kitchen counter, but this needs to be done.</p><p>"Jimmy," she waits for his eyes to meet hers, ". . .all my life, I've been so afraid of everything. I think I've missed out on a lot. Thanks for inviting me."</p><p>He rubs the knuckles of his uninjured hand up her arm. "I like you, Reina."</p><p>"I like you, too. Well, you already know that," she mumbles and turns from him. She had already spent the morning confessing it all to him. Sober and alert, her excitement spilled from her mouth like fizzy soda. He was dark green to her. A deep, deep, forest-dark. From the moment she'd seen his picture and listened to the music, she'd been enamored. She was certain, she told him, that he must have cast a spell on her through the paper.</p><p>Richard pulls around the back of the Forum, where other cars sit parked. With a look, Reina spies John Paul Jones and Robert Plant standing idly.</p><p>All three of them get out. A strong breeze blows Reina's hair and skirt from her body and she grabs at the two of them, struggling.</p><p>"Hi, Pagey," the same guffaw from last night fills her left side. She pulls the caught strands of hair from her glossed lips and rises her gaze to meet Robert's. "And who are you?"</p><p>"Reina," she offers. "We met last night at the Rainbow."</p><p>He raises his chin slightly and nods. "We did, didn't we?" He smiles big and turns to look at John Paul Jones. Reina catches the missing space between Robert's teeth, but also the roundness of his chin, the gold gather of his sideburns, the rising hill of his cheek, and the way his long fingers play with the collar of his t-shirt; all are enough to make him look godly despite the dark break in white.</p><p>John Paul Jones is far more muted in tone. His gentle lisp caresses the words, "How are you?" Reina tracks his wide jaw, framed by dirty blonde hair, to the plump Cupid's bow of his lips.</p><p>"I'm good. How are you?"</p><p>"Fine. Since you're with Jimmy, I assume you already know who I am." He shifts his weight in the hot sun, preparing to roll up the sleeves of his button-up.</p><p>"John Paul Jones."</p><p>"But we call him Jonesy," Robert quips. Jimmy has migrated to speak with a large man across the parking lot.</p><p>"Jonesy," Reina nods. "Who's that?" She points a finger at the two conversationalists.</p><p>"Peter Grant, our manager," he tells her.</p><p>"Oh," she looks at her feet and finds patterns in the pavement: mangled faces, circus animals, trees.</p><p>"Where are you from?" Robert again.</p><p>"Tucson. Arizona," she looks up and he's staring with narrow eyes.</p><p>"It's very mountainous there, innit?"</p><p>"Sorta. It's a good place to go hiking."</p><p>"Is that how you got those wonderful legs?" He hides his cheeky smile with a hand.</p><p>Heat and sweat prickle her skin. "I dance, as well."</p><p>Jimmy returns and wraps his arm around her waist, bringing her to him. The men talk for a moment, asking about the drummer, who hasn't arrived yet. Reina looks between their frames and finds other girls, conglomerating together in a group, wearing satin and feathers and velvet.</p><p>Her attention is stolen when a car screeches into the parking lot and pulls up beside them.</p><p>"The birthday boy," Robert shouts and careens to the window, cupping his hands around his face in order to see inside. "The birthday boy Bonzo here to bring light to our dim lives!"</p><p>The window rolls down and a voice bellows from the car, "Hello! Now, move off."</p><p>"That's John Bonham," Jonesy stands besides Reina and watches the interaction between the two men. "Our drummer." Bearded and bulky, he steps from the car and greets Robert with a slap on the arm. A woman with blonde ringlets unfolds herself behind him, moving directly to the group of girls farther off.</p><p>"Happy birthday," Robert grins and leads him into the circle with the rest of the band.</p><p>"Happy birthday, Bonzo," a tip of the head from Jonesy.</p><p>Reina looks between the four of them and realizes it's her turn to speak. "I'm Reina. Happy birthday."</p><p>He gives her a small smile and his brown eyes glow. "You're with Jimmy?"</p><p>She responds with a nod, forgetting Jimmy has an arm attached to her. She was expecting some gruff register from Bonzo, but his voice fails to match his whiskered face.</p><p>"Happy birthday," Jimmy is the last to say it. "Are we all ready for rehearsal?"</p><p>They mumble to themselves and begin to progress to the back door of the Forum. Over Jimmy's shoulder, Reina watches the girls follow.</p><p>She feels like an invader, entering a world previously barred from her. Jimmy's grip on her releases once they reach the stage, clotted with speakers and instruments, and she's able to back-track, find the women from the parking lot. They all sit with one another in the dressing room, lingering as a catering staff sets food out.</p><p>A red-head is the first to notice Reina; she welcomes her with a smile and a beckoning arm.</p><p>"Hi," she pats the cushion beside her, but Reina is slow to sit. All of them are beautiful, soft like under the lens of an out-of-focus camera, and delicate. Reina frowns to herself. "Georgina. But, Lord, you've had a lot of names to remember today. You can call me George, all of my friends call me George. Robert, though," her palm falls to Reina's arm. "Likes to call me Georgina. More feminine, he says."</p><p>"Reina," fingers envelope hands. She surveys the rest of the room.</p><p>"I saw you outside. You're totally what Jimmy digs."</p><p>"What?" Her head turns back to Georgina in alarm.</p><p>"Big eyes, sad face, long legs. You've got it all for him. Where'd you meet?"</p><p>"The Rainbow—"</p><p>Georgina nearly jumps from the sofa. "Oh, don't tell me. You were there to meet him and he picked you out, yeah?"</p><p>Reina glances at her sideways. "How did you know?"</p><p>"That's how it works. You get picked out. That's why tonight we'll see all those girls in the front audience losing their minds. To get chosen," she slides her glossy gaze over some invisible marquee, "is like getting confirmed for heaven by St. Peter himself."</p><p>Reina drowns her laugh with the clench of her teeth. "How long will the rehearsal last?"</p><p>"Not too long. They'll be out there before you know it. Here, have a drink and a donut. Relax."</p>
<hr/><p>"Mister Bonham! Mister Bonham! Mister Bonham!" The whole entire crowd is shouting along with Robert, trying to lure Bonzo from backstage at the start of the show. Reina mingles with the girls, screaming in time. From her place, she can see Jimmy fully, so close to her that if she were only to move a few feet, her fingers would brush the leg of his pants. He's yelling too, squinching his eyes comically.</p><p>Finally, Bonzo hustles past the girls onto the stage, laughing and grinning. Robert reaches to grab at him, but he evades his grasp and settles behind the drums. Like a conductor, Robert twirls his finger in the air and raises his voice:</p><p>"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you..."</p><p>Jimmy glances down at the swimming group of femininity and finds Reina's eyes. She brings her hand to her hair, sweeps the bangs from her eyes, and looks back.</p><p>He turns once the band begins. Reina feels a pleasant shift in her stomach at the sight of his lean form and round ass in black jeans.</p><p>She finds the angle of Jimmy's arm and watches it moving up and down the neck of the guitar. Her eyes are like a parched man in a desert, swallowing every slide and twitch and bend, taking it up, storing it in her stomach.</p><p>Heat creeps throughout the Forum as the music spills and curls from the stage, heightened by the sliding sweet skin of the dancing girls near Reina. She begins to sweat quickly, between her thighs, along her hairline. In the silence without music, Jimmy turns and dips his injured finger in a bucket of ice water. Between a grimace, his eyes drop again to Reina and she leans against the stage, pulled by the look.</p><p>There's a promise of something within it, but he turns too quickly. Five more songs under the orange lights. Reina jumps to the rhythm of Bonzo's drums. A single wish plagues her: despite the intensity of the night, she hopes she'll be able to keep Jimmy to herself afterwards.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Communing at the Pool</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Reina's never seen anyone snort a line with the same grace as Jimmy. Bent over, lithe fingers pinching a halved straw, hair held back from his face with twisted wrist — it all comes together in the lilac suit he wears. </p><p>"Want some?" He turns and asks her. The back of his hand makes a quick swipe under his nose. </p><p>She shakes her head. "Not so sure, yet." One of the girls quickly retrieves the platter and ushers it around the rooftop party.</p><p>"About blow?" Jimmy gives a sideways look. "It's a luxury. Do I and my companions not deserve a luxury?"</p><p>"I'd rather be in control . . . of my own facilities." </p><p>He holds something back in the shape of his body, the position he takes against her. Nonetheless, he offers a hand and guides her further through the throng of people.</p><p>"Do you see who that is?" He points out two figures, a brown-haired man and a blonde-haired woman, as they near the lounge chairs. She'd rather be in the pool, but Jimmy divulged the fact, between bit lips, that he couldn't swim.</p><p>"No, who?"</p><p>"George Harrison and Pattie Boyd."</p><p>Reina's throat catches in delight. Besides Jimmy and the band, the couple are her first sight of other royalty.</p><p>"He's my favorite," Reina whispers to him, her fingertips edged with an electricity that seems to infiltrate the smooth fabric of Jimmy's sleeve and dance along his skin.</p><p>He pulls her close, sets her in his lap as he sits down in the chair. "I'll have to keep the two of you far away, then."</p><p>"You're my first favorite," she assures, turning so that her heeled sandals can find purchase on the ground below. She flattens her hand to his chest while he leans back.</p><p>"Yeah?" His pupils are dilated, his grip warm and trapping on her hip. "What —"</p><p>"Jimmy!" A man approaches them, four martinis clinking in his hands as he walks. </p><p>Jimmy acknowledges the interrupter with a name Reina doesn't care to remember. She stares across the pool at George and Pattie, beautiful and blue-tinged from the water, mingling. There are so many people in attendance. Some for Bonzo, some for the booze, the blow, the women.  Jimmy's thigh sits comfortably beneath the fold of her legs and the touch of her hand.</p><p>"Here," the unknown man is speaking to her, dangling one of the martini glasses in her face.</p><p>She quickly regains herself and smiles up to him. Their fingers brush when she takes the drink.</p><p>"Reina, yeah?" Another offer, for the confirmation of her name.</p><p>"Yeah." She's starting to lose count of all the people she's had to introduce herself to.</p><p>He's some designer or roadie or something. He only stays beside them for a moment until he leaves to chase after the platter, which is making its second round. </p><p>"Everyone seems to like you," Reina comments. Without looking, she plays with the collar of his shirt. "They all seem attracted to you in some way."</p><p>She can feel him shrug beneath her. "Not all of them. There are always those that are schemers. Only out to make money or to expose and ridicule."</p><p>"I'm not one of those," she quickly defends.</p><p>He takes her chin in his hand and forces her to look at him. The smile he supplies her, small and condescending, makes her want to turn away. "Why don't you go test the pool out?" He wipes at his nose again.</p><p>"Alright," she rises and resists the urge to adjust the pinching fabric of her bikini bottoms. "You can have the rest of this," she adds a second martini to the small, glass table next to Jimmy and slips her feet from the sandals, departing. An exhaustion overwhelms her, so suddenly she almost doesn't recognize it and clutches at the stair handle of the pool in earnest. She looks up briefly. Maybe she <em>should</em> try a bit of cocaine. Just to pep herself up.</p><p>Mamá's warnings echo quick in her ears, warnings of a changing world where people cast aside their values and squirm naked amongst each other like snakes and shoot up and smoke and huff. Reina lowers herself further into the pool. The water is comfortable-warm, settling up her thighs, then her stomach and forearms until she finally dips in deep enough that the slight waves are caressing her shoulders. She kicks over to the edge, but Jimmy's lounge chair is empty. It makes panic creep like bile into her throat.</p><p>Her eyes search for him, catching on every like feature — dark hair, light clothes, skinny stature — until she finally finds Jimmy nestled among a group of women. This time she does turn away, unable and unwilling to see the hands they place over his body.</p><p>She parts from the side of the pool and turns to begin her laps when she faces Robert, hair wet and clumpy, smile threatening to make her smile.</p><p>"Pleasure seeing you here," he dips slightly in a bow.</p><p>"Pleasure," she returns.</p><p>"He left you?"</p><p>She points a finger to the group and Robert rolls his eyes, tosses his head like a bothered lion. "Must be a shame to constantly require attention. But I'm like that as well," he snickers.</p><p>"Then why aren't <em>you</em> out there?"</p><p>"It's not every chance I get to enjoy a swimming pool. Unlike Jimmy, of course. Can't do anything but play a bloody guitar, seems like sometimes. Anyway," he gives her his two hands and she takes them. "Have you sampled the fine selection of wonderful delights, yet?"</p><p>"Oh, no, I'm not much into that." She lets herself be turned and pulled by him, her back to his chest, which is big and warm and prickly, and floated about like a doll.</p><p>"There's grass, too. Just ask Georgina. Have you met her, yet? That's what Jonesy smokes. Don't let him fool you, he can roll the fattest spliff you've seen without any stuff spilling out."</p><p>She realizes then that Robert must be on something, as well. His speech is slightly slurred, quick. Her heels scrape his legs. When she doesn't respond, he quiets. When he doesn't speak again, she forgets he's there for a moment and shuts her eyes, absorbing the scent of chlorine and something deep coming from Robert himself.</p><p>Reina thinks she hears it in her mind at first, but then the sprinkle of water on her skin is real and her eyes shoot open. Bonzo stands next to the pedestal where his cake <em>had been</em>, covered in icing and clumps of sponge. He laughs a guttural laugh, tinged with rage. Robert's grip fails to tighten on Reina's hands like she thought it would.</p><p>The victim emerges from the surface, hair dripping from his face, and Reina stiffens at the fact that George Harrison is only a few feet in front of her. She could just speak to him now if she wanted to.</p><p>He chuckles and barks up at Bonzo with a playfulness, "It was just a bit of a joke."</p><p>Pattie, from the safety of the tile, laughs as well. In she goes, with a push from Bonzo and a shriek, multi-colored dress floating in the air.</p><p>Commotion spreads across the party as the guests become targets for Bonzo. He's making a slow progression around the huge rooftop. Some just fall into his hands and let themselves be thrown. Others resist, but soon half of the poolside is cleared and everyone is giggling in the chlorine.</p><p>"Good to see you, Robert," George says. Robert turns, and Reina floats with him.</p><p>"Enjoying the party?" Robert's grip moves to fully embrace Reina, to the point where she feels like he might have the intention of pushing her underwater.</p><p>"So far, yes," George laughs. Pattie swims beside him, silent and alarmed. She shows her gapped teeth to Reina in a smile. Reina returns it and feels her heartbeat quicken. "And how about you?" Now, George's gaze is set upon her.</p><p>She takes a moment to catch her breath from the soft touch of his brown eyes. His eyelashes are clumped from the water, framing his gaze and giving him a gentle appearance. "It's not what I expected," she finally says.</p><p>He laughs again. He seems to be eyeing the closed grasp Robert has on her and the brush of her nails against the blonde hair of his arm.</p><p>"It's lovely to meet you. I've been a fan since I was a little girl." She tries to take the attention from the situation. </p><p>"Oh, don't make me feel old," he sighs and uses his hands to separate the waves of hair from his face. Something behind Reina seems to occupy him and he bemoans, "Now look at him."</p><p>Stepping down into the water, like a child first learning to walk, is Jimmy. His suit darkens at the thighs as he stands motionless in the pool, pleading down at the bottom, then shooting a sorry look up at Bonzo who has already tossed Jimmy's crowd of beauties.</p><p>"He can't swim," Reina and Robert say at the same time. She glances at him over her shoulder and breaks from his grasp, navigating her way through the crowded water to Jimmy, stranded on the island of the pool steps.</p><p>"Are you alright?" She asks, rising and taking his hand.</p><p>He winces at the contact on the still-healing finger and nods. Reina immediately pulls away. "After he finishes them all off, he'll calm down."</p><p>"I hope so . . . I met George Harrison," she comments. She looks up at him for his response.</p><p>"Did you like him?" Jimmy crosses his arms and loses his cool nonchalance as he slouches into himself.</p><p>"We only spoke for a moment. Until I saw you."</p><p>Jimmy grumbles something to himself that Reina can't hear.</p><p>The destruction is finished and Bonzo grabs a swimmer's towel and wipes down. Solemnly, he retreats back into the hotel. The party-goers begin to pull themselves to land like shipwrecked sailors. Jimmy leaves Reina's side before she can speak to him. She watches as he throws a white towel over his shoulder and treads to the balcony of his room, wet shoeprints marking the tile.</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Departing at the Runway</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The balcony door is open when Reina enters Jimmy's hotel room, stretching her toes into the carpet, pinching her crumpled and damp George Harrison signed napkin between her fingers.</p><p>She drops her soggy sandals beside the door and closes it. She leaves a trail of water as she walks farther into the suite. The bedroom door is closed; she gathers her dark strands with a determined air and uses her free hand to knock.</p><p>"Jimmy," she calls out.</p><p>There's a moment of silence and then she listens hard for the shake of the covers, the pad of the feet, the metallic twist of the doorknob.</p><p>Jimmy is naked, Reina realizes, bare and white as a split apple in the space between the door and the frame. Her eyes dart quick to his face. He looks tired, as if he's aged in the twenty minutes they've been apart.</p><p>A hard breath leaves his mouth and he allows her inside the bedroom. His suit is hanging over the bathroom door, white socks topping the dripping pile, and only one lamp is on. A crinkling old blues song spins on Jimmy's record player, something Reina's never heard. A baggie of cocaine, which catches her eye with its whiteness, sits beneath the lamp.</p><p>Jimmy beckons her forward after crawling into the bed and lying on top of the sheets, one leg straight, the other bent, some sort of image she never expected to see.</p><p>He tosses his hair from his shoulders and drags a palm across his chest, finally gesturing with his fingers for her to approach.</p><p>She finds the tie at the back of her bikini top and surprises herself with how quickly her nerves settle into the excitement of pleasure. It's a slow walk to toss her bathing suit over the top of the door, and a slow walk to rest her Harrison memorabilia atop the nightstand, but when she returns she bares herself to him. He reaches for her, just missing the protruding bone of her wrist, but she folds anyways, climbing over and sitting between the space of his legs.</p><p>Gingerly, she surveys his face and his pout, those soft lips slightly pursed and downward-sloping. Her hand touches his shin, just below his knee and she plays with the damp hair for a moment before rising forward. Her breasts brush his own chest and she kisses him closed-mouth, brushing her fingers along his jaw, touching him, feeling him. His skin is gentle and pale and slightly prickly from a growing shadow of a beard.</p><p>Their kiss morphs and she parts her lips to take his tongue into her mouth. His flavor is alcoholic. He kisses deep, pulling her face forward and tilting her head back to suck at her lips. Jimmy explores, moving his hands away from her hair as she holds his face and hoisting her up on top of him. His fingers trip up her spine.</p><p>"You're one of a kind," he mumbles. "Tell me what you want."</p><p>She holds his head in her hands, losing sight of her knuckles in his soft, soft hair. "You," her hand wanders behind her to the coarse curls between his legs and his chest rises at the closeness. She removes herself and resumes her position, but not before his palm wanders over her stomach and breasts, tasting them in touch, pinching, squeezing. She feels so malleable until she can wrap her mouth around his erection.</p><p>She's never sucked a man off before, but Jimmy's surprise delights her and she imagines she's licking a popsicle. One hand rests on his thigh and the other wraps careful around the base of him as she flicks her tongue. He squirms and moves and holds tiny noises back. Adjusting her slightly, he hums her name and tells her to apply more pressure.</p><p>It's all Reina could ever want to hear, that she's doing a good job and pleasing him. It sends a jolt into her stomach to see his face above her, propped up by the pillow, open-mouthed, all caught up and uneven.</p><p>She loves it, the action of it, but he pushes her away when his pelvis almost slams into her face, and she leans back, staring. If she could paint, she would. Because the form he takes as he lies and heaves is pink and red and shiny.</p><p>"Oh god, look what you've done," he moans and drops his head until his Adam's apple rounds from his neck and glistens with sweat. It takes a moment for his breath to calm. "Come here," he says, his eyes still closed. "Or I might just die."</p><p>"Don't die," Reina whispers and crawls beside Jimmy, looking at the popcorn ceiling then his face above when he brings himself over her. Each time she sees him, he looks a little more unreal. "I'm sorry about the pool."</p><p>He huffs and the breath warms her. "Don't, just let me. . ." he supports himself with one elbow and lowers his hand to her heat to pleasure her. He watches without inhaling, his dark eyes on her face, taking each expression in every time he twists his fingers.</p><p>"Now your. . ." Reina's sentence is caught with a groan.</p><p>"What?" Jimmy replies.</p><p>"Your. . . can you make love to me?"</p><p>He doesn't say another word, only retrieves his touch and orders her farther up the bed with a nod of his head.</p><p>She folds her legs and to her surprise, he brings them over his shoulders. Her face flushes at the exposure and cool air, but she has a small amount of time to worry as he's already entering her. It's different from the first time, there's the sweet discomfort of the stretch and the aching closeness between them. Never before has she felt so pushed and total.</p><p>His hands frame her head, his eyes close and she almost feels as if he's forgetting her in bliss.</p><p>"It's good," she squeaks, to ground him.</p><p>He nods rapidly and it's not long before she notices the desperate push of his hips weaken. A bead of sweat drips onto her from his forehead, his body breaks a loud sigh, and he releases within her.</p><p>The spread of heat is enough to send her off the edge, as well, her hands gripping his biceps and her creaky cry coming from the back of her throat, filling the bedroom.</p><p>Slowly, Jimmy rises and her heavy legs fall from his shoulders to the sheets. He enters the bathroom without turning on the light. Her eyelids fall and she listens to the twang of a blues guitarist and his rhythmic wail.</p><p>Something lukewarm and soft touches her thighs and she looks down to see Jimmy cleaning her, leaning over the bed and gripping her legs. She lets him without resistance. </p><p>"Tomorrow we're boarding the plane," he says. He finishes and wipes his thumb along her ankle.</p><p>"What plane?"</p><p>"The Starship."</p><hr/><p>The asphalt burns from the midsummer sun and Reina walks quickly across it, following Jimmy's long strides to the plane's stairs.</p><p>She has a thousand questions on her mind. "What about your car?" She had asked Richard on the drive over.</p><p>"I'll have one of my lads stay here and look over it. Meaning, I'll be on the plane with the rest of you," he made squirmy eye-contact with her in the rearview mirror.</p><p>Two stewardesses greet them and Reina gives an audible gasp as she rounds the corner into the body of the airplane. The red seats line the metallic, rounding walls and everything, it seems, is carpeted. A large organ sits off to the side and Jonesy is already perched behind it, smoking a cigarette and smiling politely at Reina.</p><p>"Hi," she offers. "Sorry we're late."</p><p>He pricks a note on the organ and it floats through the aisle. "You're just living up to Pagey's practice."</p><p>She looks up at him, but he tilts his head and gives a pat to the top of the piano. "The bedrooms are back here."</p><p>The plane seems endlessly large within, a mirror of excess. Reina feels that on her own she'd become lost very quickly. Jimmy stops in the middle of the tour and knocks on a sliding door with the back of his knuckles.</p><p>"What?" Robert's voice echoes.</p><p>Jimmy glances at Reina and places his hand beside his mouth. "There's a nice bed in here. I was thinking you might want to try it out. But it looks like we'll have to wait until later."</p><p>He leads her further along and opens another door, revealing a bedroom. Her suitcase and bag are placed beside the bed, along with Jimmy's. She brushes past him and kneels beside the bag, unzipping it and gingerly taking her stack of records from it. She checks the first and bites her lip, happy at the unchanged appearance.</p><p>"What do you have?" Jimmy now stands next to her, leaning over and crossing his arms.</p><p>"Stuff you probably won't like. But Billie Holiday, Sinatra," she gushes, "Dino, The Ink Spots. . ."</p><p>Jimmy straightens, "No Elvis?"</p><p>"Elvis," she affirms, bringing up her LP, the pink and green lettering stark against his moaning black and white image.</p><p>"I was worried for a moment," Jimmy jokes.</p><p>She rolls her eyes and replaces the records. Something aches at her fingers, words she can't say. Her tongue moves, "What about you? Where's your collection?"</p><p>"Back home. Some in Pangbourne. Some in Plumpton."</p><p>Those don't even sound like real names to her. "You have two houses?"</p><p>"Both in the forest. Pangbourne's right beside the river. It was my first purchase and everything I collected in my youth is sat there."</p><p>Reina brushes her hair away and finds his face. "What are they like?"</p><p>"Rolling green lawns, big, crossing trees, some animals. . . you'll have to see it for yourself. After the second show at The Forum we're going back home for about a month."</p><p>"And I'll be going with you?" Reina's lungs still as she waits.</p><p>"I wouldn't have said anything if you weren't," his giggle prickles her ears. He turns and goes to leave. Reina hurries with pushing her bag under the bed, desperate to fill her vision with the blue of his button-up again.</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Entertainment Aboard the Starship</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The plane sits on the runway and Reina's head rises from one of the red oval couches. Her thoughts are burning and sing-songy from watching the square dance Bonzo and Jimmy were attempting in time with Jonesy's staccato playing. Robert was there, too, stomping and clapping while speaking to the girls. They listened like goddesses at Apollo's feet. A river of guilt swirls in her stomach. She's left, with just a cryptic note for her sister to find, and no number to contact. And now she's here, mimicking the high-life on a jet plane and refusing the cigarettes, alcohol, cocaine, Quaaludes, valium offered to her in droves. Everyone wants to get her high, most namely Georgina who crowded at her side for the past hour until Reina finally sloped into the couch and shut her eyes.</p><p>The band indulged and pranced from the different rooms in the jet like horses, dressed in the other girls' clothes. Jonesy sat apart from it all, across from Reina, smoking a joint and writing a letter to his wife. They had talked for a moment. John was a family man. He needed escape from the band every once and awhile.</p><p>"Up we go," Bonzo announces, standing in front of Reina's couch and holding out his arms. She narrows her gaze at him for a moment until she takes his hands and stands with him. </p><p>"What is it?" She brushes some strands of hair away from the stain of almost-dried saliva on her cheek. She must have been exhausted, she thinks, to fall asleep so easily with the noise. </p><p>Robert stands and runs his hands down the flatness of his stomach. A stretch and a yawn and his pointing hip bones are on display for a brief moment. Reina moves her eyes to Jimmy, who seems mild and hiding in comparison, the waves of his hair shrouding his profile from her. She breathes in and Bonzo's smell filters to her nose: gasoline and sweat and heavy cologne. His arm falls from her shoulders when Jimmy turns and addresses the lumbering figure who has entered the room.</p><p>"The finger?" Their manager, Peter, crosses the aisle far too quickly for a man his size. He inspects Jimmy's hand, which had been re-bandaged by the in-plane doctor, or drug-dealer, as Reina had come to understand his role. </p><p>"Just another bucket of ice." Jimmy holds his large hand up for Peter, palm-forward. Reina tilts her head to the side and marvels at the length of his palm alone. </p><p>"And you, Pagey brought you, didn't he?" </p><p>It takes Reina a moment to realize that he's speaking to her, and when her gaze meets his clear eyes set in his baked-dough face, she has to blink to understand him. "Yes, Jimmy brought me. I'm—"</p><p>"Don't care. I'm telling you all now there'll be several delays before we can land at the airport. James?" </p><p>Jimmy rises from his slanted position against the organ and follows Peter down the aisle to one of the other rooms. Reina sits back down again, embarrassment dwelling in her stomach.</p><p>Robert and Bonzo fill in the empty sides of the couch and she breathes out, "Why can't we go to San Francisco?"</p><p>Robert scoffs and lights a cigarette. "Maybe Jimmy will tell us. But with him, more often than not, it's a feeling of being stuck in the dark. There's a lot of things you don't know, little girl."</p><p>"You're not much older than me," Reina looks at him from the corner of her eye. Bonzo laughs from her other side.</p><p>"Maybe not in years, but in wisdom, yes," he taps her forehead with the pad of his finger.</p><p>"While we wait, how about dinner and a show?" Georgina suggests from the bar, mixing another cocktail for herself.</p><p>Jonesy snickers from the organ. "Good idea. I have the perfect thing in mind."</p><p>"Oh, don't let it be the circus," Bonzo groans, dragging a hand across his face.</p><p>"Circus?" Reina looks for answers.</p><p>"You'll see," Robert smiles and jumps from the couch. "Come on, off to primp," he gestures to Bonzo, who reluctantly rises.</p><p>Jimmy re-appears, leaning down to catch Jonesy's whisper and scrunching his face into a grimace.</p><p>"Oh, come on. I'm sure Reina would like to see it," Jonesy prompts.</p><p>"Well, I don't know what it is..."</p><p>"Good, it's irritating, anyways," Jimmy barks and folds his arms over his chest, having to adjust his stance with the bandage over his hand.</p><p>"Oh no, it's delightful," Georgina assures and Reina wishes she could just lie down. She tries her best to make eye contact with Jimmy, to speak to him in some telepathic manner. But soon Jonesy is pushing him off and ordering him to get ready.</p><p>Georgina runs off with the intention of gathering the girls and setting them up with cushions, creating a semi-circle that cuts the aisle in half.</p><p>"We're ready!" Reina hears Robert shout from behind the doorway to the quarters.</p><p>Jonesy begins a lively melody on the organ, "Ladies, for tonight's entertainment, I present a show like no other. It is an exploration of the uncanny, the unnatural."</p><p>The girls giggle, bouncing their crossed legs and pulling at their outfits.</p><p>"Please introduce yourselves!"</p><p>Jonesy's call lures Bonzo from behind the wall, dressed in drag, and the girls lose their minds. He's the bearded lady, Robert is the vicious lion, wearing a big, red, glittery bow at his neck and no shirt, and last to appear is Jimmy: robed, dark, slow-stepping. Reina leans further from the couch to make sure it's him.</p><p>Jimmy forgets to introduce himself, but steps around the circle until he reaches Reina. He kneels in front of her and takes her palms. His eyes are lined with eyeliner, an Egyptian edge to them, and his fingers of one hand are ringed and almost swamped by the huge sleeves of the dark blue robe.</p><p>"I can see the future," he tells her, loud enough for the curious audience to hear, at least the ones who aren't preoccupied with petting Robert or complimenting Bonzo on his outfit choices. "So tell me, girl, what it is you want to know."</p><p>"There's a man," she begins and Jimmy nods, holding a straight face, "and my mother has told me to fear him. Should I fear him?"</p><p>"I think your mother is right. You should be afraid." Reina stares and Jimmy moves closer to her, his eyes intense, his voice lowered for her ears, "I see a white bed for you, silk and leather. My hands around your throat and your body all mine, all for me."</p><p>The sudden mention of violence shocks her, but stirs a deep, hidden pleasure within. Jimmy's cheeks uplift in a small, achieving smile and he kisses her knuckles.</p><p>"Lovely doing business with you," he parts and amuses the rest of the audience, trading with Robert for a spot in front of a couple of blondes. Reina can't keep her eyes from Jimmy, nor her mind from the image of him above her. She sighs and leans back into the cushion, desperate for the food the stewardesses have finally passed around. Grilled chicken and rice. It could be anything, Reina's sure, and she would scarf it down. The group on the floor spreads, taking advantage of the path the flight attendants take with the cart, slipping plastic trays of meat and vegetables into their laps.</p><p>Jimmy disappears and Reina glances at her food, then the doorway, but all ideas of getting up are lost as the pilot announces they'll be leaving the runway. Rejoicing erupts and the long couch becomes filled with bodies. The airplane slides along the runway and a tiny bit of fear blooms blue in Reina. She's never been in the air before and now that her mind is open to her thoughts, she pictures all the situations that could possibly go wrong.</p><p>"You look like you're going to vomit," Georgina comments, pointing her fork at Reina and forgetting to swallow her food before she speaks.</p><p>"I've never flown before..."</p><p>"A plane virgin!" Robert shouts and laughs, the bow at his neck sparkling with the light from the windows. "Here, I'll hold your hand. I've been told I deal very well with virgins."</p><p>"It's fine," Reina shrugs her hand away and braces for the force of the plane lifting from the runway. Although she feels as if she's being pushed back into the seat, the motion ends after a moment and she lets her breath empty. It wasn't as bad as she thought it would be. Robert gives her a congratulatory smile amidst his conversation.</p><p>She unclips her seatbelt and maneuvers to the back of the plane, passing the manager and crew drowning drinks from the bar, and finds the door to the bedroom open, white, fluffy blanket spread across it like clouds. Water is running from the small washroom and she enters to see Jimmy in front of the mirror, rubbing the makeup from his eyes.</p><p>"I liked it, though," Reina tells him. He matches her gaze in his reflection, smudged circles making him appear raccoon-like. He doesn't speak and continues to wipe at the leaking, black lines. "What you said earlier," she continues, "when can we do something like that?"</p><p>His body stiffens and he finishes with his eyes. "Now."</p><p>"Okay," she nods, staring.</p><p>"Unless. . ." Jimmy faces her and raises his brows.</p><p>"No, I want to. I need you. I've been feeling rather guilty lately, for all of this."</p><p>"What responsibility are you avoiding?" He approaches her, gesturing to the bedroom with one of the long sleeves like a monk.</p><p>"My family. I should have talked to them before leaving."</p><p>"You're an adult, aren't you?" He slides the door shut and locks it. A wave of arousal makes Reina sit herself on the bed. Jimmy's green eyes shine.</p><p>"I am, but. . ."</p><p>"Mmm, shh, I'll take care of you," his whispering voice sends heat over her arms. She swallows and watches him open a travel bag, already placed neatly in the bedroom. The black of the blindfold stands dark against the cream skin of his open palm.</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Arriving at the Airport</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Reina tastes a mouthful of Love's Baby Soft when she breathes from the white pillow. Her mind catches on the stringy, shiny tresses of Georgina, forgetting for a brief second that Jimmy is behind her, clothed and armed. Her eyes move beneath their lids like baby birds in egg shells and she tilts her hips upward. </p>
<p>The first hard slap of his hand hurt the worst. Although he had warned her of when it was coming, fat, heavy tears dampened the blindfold in surprise and pain. Her loud yelp resounded and he warmed his hand on her backside, leaning down to her ear to ask if she was alright. Half of her was alright. The other half was lethargic, weeping, focused on the twisting manifestations of her mother's resentment. The hit from Jimmy's palm reminded her of the story her Mamá insisted on telling at family gatherings: how Reina's father, European and broad-shouldered, left after her birth. In some versions, he left because Reina was female and he wanted a son. In others, he wanted to become an actor. Mamá's poison-words stung, still sting, like a fresh insect bite.</p>
<p>Jimmy listened, his jaw clenched with what Reina was sure was sexual frustration, and his unbandaged hand held the blindfold against her forehead to see her eyes. And then, "Do you want to go on?" </p>
<p>Reina nodded her head, yearning to tug at his grip on her, but her hands were restrained above, and her full, naked body was stretched out to him like a canvas. </p>
<p>Reina lies now on the bed, prey in wait of death. She hears a shuffling of fabric and follows the falling sound to the floor.</p>
<p>"Don't think of anything," Jimmy orders from the foot of the bed. "Just listen to me." His hand meets the back of her thigh. "Feel me." </p>
<p>She feels him, feels the leather hit her skin and then his mouth and teeth and tongue. Warm, loud, abrupt heat that burns her to the scalp. His fingers and palm on her legs and hips, inside, the rough rub of his left bandaged hand spinning into her memory. And all the while, his lavender voice in the room, telling her how much she deserves this. She does deserve it, she thinks, and a groan leaves her from the arousal of it all.</p>
<p>His body overtakes hers, lifting her up and sheathing within her, holding her so tight she feels she might break at the waist. Lascivious words swirl to her, and her thoughts jumble into a pink mess, preoccupied with pleasure.</p>
<p>Jimmy continues to make love to her until she calls out his name in her climax and he slips away and releases onto her sweating back.</p>
<p>He removes the restraints, hides the leather and blindfold into the bag, and offers Reina a shower. It takes her nearly a minute to rise and join him. She's limp, trying to find herself amongst the cloud of post-sex contentment in the room. She uses the wall as a guide in traversing to the bathroom, feeling blood resurface in her skin, dilated hot at the points where his hand, the flogger, and his mouth met.</p>
<p>Jimmy is already in the shower, his back to the spray of water and his left hand breaking from the curtain and clutching the wall to keep from getting wet.</p>
<p>"I used to be in art school," he murmurs suddenly as she steps over the tub and faces him. He blurs in her vision, partly from the water and partly from her exhaustion.</p>
<p>"Why'd you quit?" Reina asks. He grabs at her and pulls her forward. A slight hiss seeps through her teeth at the touch of his hand on a fresh bruise.</p>
<p>"Sorry, darling. You were so good on the bed. You did so well."</p>
<p>"I'm guessing you've tied other girls up like that a lot of times before. Why'd you quit art school?" She crosses her arms and lowers her head under the water, searching for the bar of soap to clean herself.</p>
<p>Silence from him. Until he finally breathes, "Other opportunities came along. Like doing sessions. I burnt all of my art, so if you were hoping to see it, you can't." Gingerly, he takes the soap from her grasp and lathers it over her body, taking care to smooth his palm over the flushed swatches of skin. "And your comment of <em>other girls</em> didn't go unnoticed."</p>
<p>She frowns and steps towards him until the top of her head connects with the slope of his shoulder. Her arms uncross and she wraps around him, tracing the indentations of the spaces between his ribs, running her fingers under the shelves of his flexed shoulder blades. She can't stop touching him in disbelief. His body so contrasting — white and dark and pink — she feels the weight of her tongue within her mouth, "Can you hold me?"</p>
<p>Jimmy returns the soap and supports her with his one available arm. "I'm sorry about your mum," he tries carefully.</p>
<p>"So you get it, then?" She looks up at him, into those dark eyes. Water drips from the curved tip of his nose and his wet hair lies flat against his head. </p>
<p>He averts his eyes after a moment; Reina wishes she could fish his words from him. </p>
<p>"I want to know everything about you," she tells him, tugging at his hair. </p>
<p>"Then that would ruin the fun, wouldn't it?" A sharp smile dons his lips. Every notion of ambiguity is gone. He finishes washing her and moves on to himself, his eyelids lowered, lashes spiked into wet points.</p>
<p>They dress slow and silent afterwards, making the most of the time before the band is set to leave for the stage. When Peter runs through with an all-call, Jimmy gestures for Reina to follow. A fluffy white blouse and white jacket are folded over his arm and sunglasses hide his face from her.</p>
<p>"This concert's outside. Kezar Stadium," Jimmy informs her, stepping to the cars.</p>
<p>Reina looks over her shoulder at the airport behind them, "We don't have to go through security?"</p>
<p>Peter, prepared to steal Jimmy from her side, enters the conversation. "Only when we fly internationally. Now, James, let's get this shit worked out."</p>
<p>They enter a car together with Richard, talking quietly and using their hands. Reina follows, her hand lingering on the open car door. Peter's head turns rapidly.</p>
<p>"There's room with Plant and 'em," he grabs the door and closes it shut. Reina's left to look at her own reflection in the window: hair clumped with dampness at her shoulders, the knot of her flowered shirt uneven, her eyes down and shy.</p>
<p>"Hey, peach," a voice calls from behind Reina — shrill, filling her with disappointment. Georgina stands across the asphalt with Robert, her hand up and waving.</p>
<p>"Hey, peach," Robert mocks. Reina's boots stomp towards the two of them, stopping when Robert holds the door open and allows her inside. "Ride with us. Suspicious happenings occur when Pagey and G are together."</p>
<p>The leather is cool on her thighs and a dank stench of cigarettes seeps through the space.</p>
<p>"So, how have you been?" Georgina immediately steals her attention, leaning over in the backseat to question her. Jonesy fills in shotgun, greeting the roadie behind the wheel and the three behind him. "I mean, with Jimmy and all."</p>
<p>Reina holds her hands within her lap as the car begins to drive, her eyes on the receding image of the jet. "What are you asking?"</p>
<p>"Oh, don't play like that. You two have been having sex non-stop, yeah? Like rabbits?"</p>
<p>Reina furrows her brow and turns further from Georgina, blocking her made-up face from her vision. "Why do you care so much about what we do?"</p>
<p>". . . so, that's a yes, then?"</p>
<p>Reina sighs and rests her head on the window. She can see the skyline ahead of her and she finds a promise in the persistent daylight.</p>
<p>"I don't mean anything bad. I'm just curious," Georgina adds; when Reina doesn't reply, she turns to Robert and invades her laughter into the joke he's telling Jonesy.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Climbing the Stairway</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Reina takes a slow hit from the joint, breathing in and shutting her eyes. Bonzo comes in on "Stairway to Heaven" and she's at the point of disappearing into her own thoughts: sun-orange ideas.</p><p>"<em>If there's a bustle in your hedgerow. . .</em>"</p><p>Robert's voice is languid, beautiful, pulling at her, making her want to fall into the soft intonations. She begins to sing along and she's sure the girls beside her are singing as well. She's sure the whole entire stadium is singing, filled with teenagers high on weed and acid, baking in the beating heat.</p><p>Her lids part and Jimmy is before her on the stage, white shirtsleeves billowing and black curls rising from his shoulders with the breeze.</p><p>"Aren't they gorgeous?" One of the women shouts above the music.</p><p>"Yeah," Reina replies. They've always been gorgeous to her. In photos, on TV screens, in person. She cranes her neck and moves against the girls, trying to get a view of Jimmy behind the speakers and equipment. His eyes are downcast on the double-neck, his lips pursed in concentration, and his body moves slightly. Her hand lingers on a girl's shoulder in anticipation. </p><p>Last concert, she heard Jimmy describe it as fanfare — that medieval announcement of the solo. She stops breathing for a moment. The tone of the guitar dips and the audience's hands reach into the air. Reina feels like she's resurfacing from water. Her body is so heavy she might fall. She leans her head back and absorbs the filtered yellow light of the sun behind the clouds. </p><p>The crowd explodes with an exclamation of awe that makes Reina look toward the stage. A dozen doves are flying above the stadium, dolloped white points in the sky. One turns and Robert holds out his hand to catch the fleeting bird. The Prince of Peace ends a note and smiles to the crowd, taking the pause in the song to puff at his cigarette and swig at a bottle of whiskey sitting on stage.</p><p>"Oh, wow," the girls behind Reina are saying, gripping each other to get a better look.</p><p>Jimmy wanders over to Robert and pets the bird, talking and smiling. Her eyes close again; she could absorb this moment forever, cotton candy soft on her high.</p><p>It ends too quick, though. She has to take another five puffs and the band is moving on to other numbers and the heat is becoming too unbearable. Reina finds her way backstage to Jimmy's dressing room and waits like a patient child. </p><hr/><p>The band eats with thick appetites, flooding paper plates with catered food, smoking, drinking. Reina takes whatever she can get, savoring the forgetful feeling.</p><p>Jimmy tells her they're going out. She enters a car, the car drives, she exits the car. She sees black asphalt and wants to swallow the color, but John's heavy arms catch her.</p><p>Day folds into night in images: the light patterning of black hair beginning at Jimmy's wrist, Jonesy's shirt, sweat-glued to him, Jack Daniels, cut lines of blow, topless women, the shift of club lights.</p><p>"Reina," Jimmy's voice whispers in her ear. "Reina?"</p><p>"It's so quiet," she whispers back to him. She's in his arms, back to his chest in the little booth of the club, her hands fondling a crease in his white pants.</p><p>"There are people talking everywhere," he laughs. "It's good to see you relaxed."</p><p>"Except for your voice. Your voice right in my ear is so loud. <em>Ay, Jaimito</em>, I hate this back and forth shit, but you are so beautiful here with me. You are ghost-white. <em>Blanco</em>."</p><p>"Fucking 'ell, what did you let her have, Pagey? She's on another dimension." Robert pipes from the other side of the table. There's a woman with him, her clothes nearly non-existent and her mouth on his throat.</p><p>"Whiskey, grass, whatever. Shove off. I'd feel like shit if she was tripping somewhere off in the corner by herself." He sweeps her bangs from her forehead with his fingers and forces her to look at him. "We're going back to LA tomorrow."</p><p>Reina furrows her brows. He smells good beneath her and he's warm pressed to her side. "I know, that's why I said I hate this back and forth shit. Can I tell you something?"</p><p>He nods and sips a glass of brandy. The ice cubes clink. Reina's mind clinks.</p><p>"I wish I could live inside of you. Inside your blood or your bones, or your bone marrow," she licks her lips and widens her eyes, already blood-shot and dilated.</p><p>"You've got to be kidding me," Robert hollers.</p><p>"Take 'er back to the plane, Jimmy. She needs to lie down for a bit," Bonzo adds after snorting a line from the table top.</p><p>"Don't take me back to the plane," she looks up rapidly at Jimmy's face, a shadow from his brows darkening his cheeks. "Let's go somewhere together."</p><p>She can see his throat bob as he swallows. His eyelids are half-masted like a god's. "I think they're right."</p><p>Her hands leave his thighs and navigate upward. His pants are cinched with a button and her thumbnail picks at the rounded outer edge of it. </p><p>"I think they're right," he says again and breathes heavy through his nose.</p><p>"Let's go dancing. . ."</p><p>But Jimmy is already rising and he forces Reina's body to straighten with him. "We'll get a taxi," he tells her and guides her elastic limbs through the bar until warm California air hits her face.</p><p>"Jimmy? Let's just be alone," a gentle plead, a tug of his jacket sleeve.</p><p>"We're alone right now." He raises his arm to the wind. She thinks he might be trying to fly away like the doves.</p><p>"But—" a car screeches to the curb and Jimmy ushers her inside with his hands.</p><p>He tells the driver the address of the airport, hurrying in his words, swiping his nose with his index finger, and leaning back against the seat.</p><p>"Fuck, Reina, you're gonna hurt in the morning," he mumbles suddenly, sighing.</p><p>The ache from the day still hasn't waned. Reina looks out the window, "Oh. I just wanted to talk tonight."</p><p>"I meant you'll be hungover," he grunts, but the irritation in his voice disappears when he lisps out, "We can talk."</p><p>"Good. I love hearing your voice. And seeing you. You looked like an angel on stage, dressed in white."</p><p>Jimmy's silence absorbs the space between them for a moment. "I was a choir boy when I was younger, at my church. White and black — the colors of piety."</p><p>"I played an angel in my church's play on the birth of Christ," Reina responds, staring at him.</p><p>"Really?" A small smirk lifts his lips. He receives her nods and lowers his hand to hers. "I'm going to enjoy spending time in Plumpton with you."</p><p>She smiles in return, going muddy under his gaze, her own eyes gooey with the promise of a naked prairie future.</p>
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<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Conversing Over Breakfast</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jimmy's limbs feel long and sad beside Reina's, but fevered, as she wakes and finds herself within her body. Her brain is like Jell-O, cherry-flavored, and a smile threatens her aching face at a memory of afternoons at friends' houses. She sees backyards and the tossed red ribbons that once held her braid together. Her eyes refuse to open into the bedroom of the Starship, though. </p><p>She pulls her leg toward her torso, fetal almost, and sighs. The last line of a poem from high school sticks hot in her mind: <em>This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere.</em> Pain blooms like a sunflower at the curving front of her head, where the skin is flush to the skull. Her prickling fingers touch it and she falls back into the pillows suddenly, exhausted by the simple raise of her arm. Jimmy lies beside her without movement, his faint breath the only hint he's still alive. </p><p>"Shit," Reina sputters, finally viewing the dark room, a ruler of light piercing from under the door. She remembers lying in bed with Jimmy in unnumbered hours of night, but she can't recall the conversation or the motion. She's still clothed, although in a slip, instead of her blouse and denim hot-pants.</p><p>What follows is a hard struggle from the bed to the floor. Her mind itself, like her thighs and backside, feels bruised and achy, especially when she stares too long at the seeping hall light. Her toes curl into the carpet, then her heels, until she steps towards the door and opens it. The yellow hall makes her squint, surfacing a groan from between her lips. Her hand returns to her forehead, but she manages to leave the bedroom, forgetting to close the door behind.</p><p>There's noise echoing from the theater room, and she follows to find Robert and Jonesy on the couch, glowing in the white light of the projector. A silent film is playing, but they aren't watching as they mumble to each other. Robert catches Reina and turns, giving her a critical look.</p><p>"Good morning," he presses.</p><p>"Oh, good morning. What time is it?" Reina slants into the doorway, the lace hem of her nearly see-through slip catching on the wood.</p><p>"Eight nineteen," Jonesy responds. He looks at his watch and smiles to ease Robert's judgement. </p><p>"Where's Bonzo?" She asks.</p><p>Robert makes a face, closing his eyes and pretending to snore. "And, Christ, don't tell me, I know Page's doing the same. Wake him up for me, before G comes parading through here screaming left and right."</p><p>"Alright," she begins to walk away until Robert calls her back.</p><p>"Did you have a good time last night?" </p><p>Her feet press heavy into the carpet and she supports a hand on the doorway. "No, I feel like shit. I never meant to — my mom would've — " she shakes her head and turns. "It's nothing."</p><p>"Oh no, it's something. Ask one of the stewardesses for a water and some peanuts. It'll make you feel better. And remember Pagey," he begins to holler as Reina disappears into the hall. "We're going out today."</p><p>Her lungs fill and deplete. In the moment she pads into the bedroom Jimmy is sitting up in bed, his arms wiry and flexed with the effort of holding himself.</p><p>"Reina," his dark look finds her.</p><p>"Robert says you should get up. You're supposed to go out into the city today."</p><p>He shuts his eyes slow like a cat and Reina moves towards him. She likes the set of his white face surrounded by curls, feminine in the round tip of his nose and redness of his lips — soft sweet; her head aches as she stares and she finds herself crawling into the bed, clutching at his arm.</p><p>"Did you sleep well?" He asks. He doesn't seem surprised by her neediness, instead, he invites it, wrapping her up in the bed sheets.</p><p>"I feel terrible," she whispers.</p><p>His chuckle warbles through to her. "That's the problem. It's good in that moment. So good, so perfect, but the morning makes you pay."</p><p>"What happened last night? After the show?"</p><p>"You said some strange things," his gaze droops. "Nothing I couldn't handle."</p><p>"God, I'm sorry," Reina presses her face to his upper arm, the skin smooth and peach-fuzzed. "I should've listened to my mom."</p><p>Jimmy gives her a hum and she waits for his verbal response, but it never comes. He shifts in the bed after a moment:</p><p>"I think it's time to get up."</p><p>Reina slips from him and begins to search through her suitcase, heavy-headed and burdened with heat.</p><p>"I need to eat something, first," she exchanges her slip quickly — hoping Jimmy's back is turned — for a maxi dress.</p><p>"We can stop after we get off the plane. They don't have anything good on board here."</p><p>"Alright, well at least some water." She leaves him behind in the room, a shirt halfway over his head and his black jeans unbuttoned. The crew are mingling in the belly of the plane and Peter stops her as she passes.</p><p>He touches her arm and she stares at his large hand on her bare skin like it's an insect.</p><p>"Is James awake?" His accent is heavy, tinny and thick.</p><p>"Yeah," Reina says. "He's getting dressed."</p><p>Peter scans her briefly, blue eyes quick, then releases her. She shrugs away with a roll of her eyes that makes her skull pound. Her tongue feels dense inside of her mouth before she can reach into the bar's mini-fridge and pull a water bottle from it.</p><p>Reina watches the group, then observes lazily as Robert and Jonesy approach, followed by Jimmy, and lastly Bonzo, shirt stained with sweat and mouth open.</p><p>"Fuck, Bonham, take a shower," Peter shouts. Jimmy steps through their impending argument and presents a pair of dark sunglasses to Reina.</p><p>"Oh, stop pesterin' me. I'll be off. No need to fuckin' yell." Bonzo departs and the rest of the group snickers behind his back, mocking tones in their grins.</p><p>"Do you feel better?" Jimmy asks. He stands languidly beside her against the bar.</p><p>"A little. It's like I'm being poked with needles all over."</p><p>"Could be the heat too," he examines his finger and tries to keep it straight as he bends the others. "You seem well, though, despite it all."</p><p>"When do you think it will be healed by?" Her eyes study the knuckle of his ring finger — loose, lined skin.</p><p>"Why? Are you worried you'll have to wait on me in Plumpton? Don't worry, that won't happen."</p><p>She almost forgot about England. Her body itches. She's so lucky she has that passport from visiting her grandparents in the Dominican Republic.</p><p>"Is it like a farm? Or . . ."</p><p>He looks over his shoulder as Peter barks another order. Turning back, Jimmy winks and gestures to the exit door of the Starship. Reina immediately stands and slides after him.</p><p>"You'll see, Ms. Impatient," Jimmy hums. He clicks the door open and stops on the first stair. The wind blows his hair into Reina's face and she pushes her chest into his stable back. Just from the light peeking over and around his shoulders and arms she's thankful for the sunglasses. Reina, devotee, follows him down onto the asphalt of the airport.</p><p>They stop before Richard's brown car.</p><p>"Can you drive?" Jimmy knocks his knuckles against the front window. </p><p>"Yeah."</p><p>"Today's your day, then," he announces, fishing a pair of keys from his jeans' pocket and handing them to Reina.</p><p>She gives a gasp, "You're bad," and unlocks the car.</p><p>"I've always thought of myself as a rebel," he smiles and opens the passenger side door. </p><p>Reina rights herself in the driver's seat, running her hands over the steering wheel and grinning. The morning sun shines in echo of her joy, in echo of the comfortable place her foot takes on the gas pedal. With a rumble, the engine starts and the A/C gusts hot air into her face. </p><p>"There's this diner," she states, breathless, "I saw it when I was going to the Rainbow. It seems like they have good food there."</p><p>"Lead the way, my captain," Jimmy proclaims, studying the airport as Reina pulls from it and onto the highway.</p><p>"It feels like I haven't driven in ages. Even my headache seems to be going away."</p><p>Jimmy only snorts. Reina leans forward and toys with the radio, finally settling on a station playing big band music. From the highway, Reina cuts down a side street, glancing at the restaurants and shops as she drives by, searching for interesting buildings. There's one advertising used books.</p><p>"You have the music taste of an old woman," Jimmy suddenly chastises from the passenger seat. </p><p>Reina waves her hand toward him, although a smile breaks from behind the curtain of her hair. A good comfort sits in her chest, overweighing the throb of her muscles. Before spotting the diner, she casts a look at Jimmy, shrouded in sunshine, his dark hair turned warm brown at the slopes of the curls. He looks back from the corner of his eyes.</p><p>She pulls into the parking lot and gets out, stretching, admiring Jimmy in the normalcy of his walk to the door of the diner. No drugs, no women, no bright light save the sun, just him and her and the drifting salt smell of frying bacon.</p><p>"Are you coming?" He asks, holding the glass door open.</p><p>She nods and jogs up the stairs, the keys jingle in her hand and clatter on the table of a booth Jimmy chose. He picks up a menu and peruses. Reina copies him, pulling the sunglasses from her face and adjusting hard to the white paint on the walls.</p><p>A waitress comes up to them, older, graying, her lipstick seeping into the lines around her mouth. Jimmy gives a sigh and orders toast and eggs and an orange juice. She questions neither his accent or his origin and seems bored by the softness of his voice. Reina asks for a full breakfast. The waitress leaves and Reina's foot touches Jimmy's under the table.</p><p>"Thanks for coming with me," she tells him. Her eyes focus on the pinch of his fingers, holding a cigarette steady as he lights it.</p><p>"We didn't talk last night like you wanted," he blows smoke from his nose, "This is partly to make up for that."</p><p>"Oh," her sandal catches on the seam of his jeans, brushing his calf. "Well, about your art . . . what was it like?"</p><p>He gives inconsistent answers, finally reaching down halfway through a speech to push Reina's leg from him with his hand. She laughs, absorbed in the crinkle of his eyes and his talk of Rossetti. But she loses interest with him as soon as the hot food arrives.</p><p>She eats quickly, mumbling between bites about how the food is delicious and asking Jimmy how his own plate tastes.</p><p>He gives short replies and finishes with his small portion long before Reina.</p><p>"You know," she says. "I shouldn't have done what I did last night. It wasn't worth it."</p><p>He plays with the salt shaker and shrugs, "You were obviously having a good time. Sometimes it's good to be able to forget."</p><p>She stops eating for a moment, looking up as Jimmy stares at the ashes of his dead cigarette in the tray. His long lashes draw shadows on his cheeks. Reina suddenly feels full.</p><p>It's not long until Jimmy pays and leads Reina to the car. They settle inside and a small quiet overtakes.</p><p>"What do you want to do?" Jimmy rubs his palms along his thin thighs, bringing a subtle sound from the fabric.</p><p>"There's a bookstore . . ." Reina begins, but stops when she sees Jimmy's knowing smile.</p>
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<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Reading Between the Lines</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"'O hiding hair and dewy eyes, I am no more with life and death, my heart upon his warm heart lies, my breath is mixed into his breath,'" Reina recites. She holds a collection of poetry in her palms, parting the silence with verse.</p><p>"Let me guess," Jimmy murmurs, stopping his search through thick volumes to shut his eyes. "Yeats?"</p><p>"'The Heart of the Woman.' 1898."</p><p>"He was good, wasn't he?" His hand swipes a book back into place and he shuffles behind Reina towards the end of the store.</p><p>"Yeah, he's one of my favorites."</p><p>"An old Irishman. My mum's Irish."</p><p>"Yeah?" Reina cradles the collection in the crook of her arm, pressing the hardback cover to her chest while she turns to view Jimmy. For a moment, she imagines him as a sheep herder and stifles her laugh. His light hands clutch the bookcase to lower himself into a crouch.</p><p>"Proud. Catholic."</p><p>"My father was Catholic. My mom is more spiritual — ancestors, candles, marigolds — stuff like that."</p><p>"But you went to church."</p><p>"How'd you know?" Her eyes glean his, searching for some sign of a supernatural ability. </p><p>"You told me last night." His knee, bent and awkward, brushes her calf.</p><p>"Oh. My sister goes," she clears her throat. "Because of our dad. At one point she even wanted to join a convent."</p><p>Jimmy hums and makes a noise from the center of his mouth. "I'll be right back." He rises to his full height beside her and shuffles off around the corner. </p><p>"Alright." Reina scans the aisle as Jimmy leaves her side. The pressing burn of her hangover has subsided almost fully and the bookstore looks richly dark under her gaze. She feels at home in the dust, in the middle of silverfish-bitten book pages and the whorls of the shelves.</p><p>Her feet seem to grip their place finally and she fingers the strap of her dress. It's her last chance, the clotted-blood-red spine of an anthology tells her. Last chance to turn around and not plunge into the unknown — dark as Jimmy's irises. Her sister is only a few miles away. Her mouth opens with the thought of escape. </p><p>But a made-up field, dotted with meadow flowers, shines in her mind. Next it's their clothes hanging on a line behind the house. She can see herself, laundry basket in hand, hair pulled from her neck and cheeks ruddy from a morning run across wet grass. </p><p>Reina pulls from her thoughts with urgency and slopes to grab the e.e. cummings collection she'd been eyeing. Jimmy stands at the front of the store, his back to her as he leans over the counter, white light echoing around his head and shoulders from the glass window. She swallows and follows the T-shape of his body to his slim waist — that slight stretch of skin over muscle. </p><p>". . . nothing," she catches the end of his conversation with the store owner. </p><p>"I'm sure," the owner huffs. "Only more...widely available books here. I think I know a store if you're interested."</p><p>"Yes, please, thank you." </p><p>Reina moves to the counter and sets her stack down beside Jimmy's hands. He acknowledges her with a smile and waits as the man finishes writing an address on a bookmark. Dust dances in the span of light rushing from outside. </p><p>An age-spotted, old man, the owner looks up and grins wide at Reina, "Hello. Is this everything?" He exchanges the address for her two books. </p><p>She nods and runs her finger along the edge of the counter, catching peeling brown paint under her nail. From her peripheral, she sees Jimmy retrieve his wallet and pull American money from it. She finds the belt loop of his jeans and pulls with a playful distraction. </p><p>"Are you two married?" The owner's voice is craggy, like the cliffs bordering the California coast. </p><p>Reina's lips begin to move, but the voice she hears is Jimmy's instead of her own. </p><p>"Actually, we're engaged," he supplies. Reina's finger instantly retrieves from the little curl of denim at his waist. </p><p>She smiles; she's lied many times to her mother. </p><p>"Lovely. How long now?"</p><p>"Only a few days. She proposed at the end of this last month." Jimmy takes the books like he's taking a secret and stores them in his arms.</p><p>"You proposed?" The man's brows rise; the skin of his forehead folds with wrinkles. He gives a laugh like gravel. </p><p>Jimmy's free hand clutches her palm. </p><p>"It was impromptu," the words slip out easy, with a giggled, loved, breath, and Jimmy tugs at her. </p><p>"Oh, well you — " the rest of the man's sentence is drowned behind the door; Jimmy shuts it closed and rushes to Richard's car. </p><p>Reina stands still on the steps, the wind picking at the hem of her dress. "What is your problem?" </p><p>"Nothing," Jimmy nearly shouts, throwing his arm in the air. "Now come unlock the doors." A car passes them on the street and for a second Reina hopes the bumper nicks him. </p><p>"So, we're engaged?" She steps to him and thrusts the key into the lock, turning it roughly and wrenching the door open. </p><p>He huffs and slides into the car. The books sit like a child in his lap. "You don't find it funny?" </p><p>"Why would I? Is this about the money? I would've paid for the books." The seat is welcome comfort, but her side burns with Jimmy's presence. </p><p>"Christ, Reina, it was a joke."</p><p>"Words," she tosses her hands, nearly losing the keys, "aren't just meaningless. You can't throw them around."</p><p>He snorts and presses his head into the car window. "Isn't that just what poetry is?"</p><p>The engine rattles in response and Reina breathes before pulling onto the road. A white slip falls on her thigh from Jimmy's hand. She stares at the blue ink scrawled across it. "Y'know, I was thinking of not going to England with you."</p><p>"Is that some kind of threat?" </p><p>"No, they're my feelings," she scrunches the address into a fist and sets her jaw. </p><p>"Before or after this?" He waves his hand before letting it drop onto the stack of books. </p><p>"Before. . ." The world is tan from her view through the windshield. Her chest feels empty except for her lungs, but even those seem deflated. Jimmy is a shrouded form beside her, slightly scrunched as he leans away and his hand occupies the top of her books, scratching softly at the cover of the Yeats collection. </p><p>His voice suddenly strikes wicked above her shoulders. "I'm sure your mother couldn't give a fuck whether you left or not. She'll probably only care if she has to bury your body."</p><p>Reina's knuckles feel like thick bolts in her fingers. Her desperate grasp frames the steering wheel. His easy coldness causes a quiver from her, poisoned with an amusement she finds strange, "You're not going to take me there to kill me, are you?"</p><p>"My swans might, but only if you get too close to the water."</p><p>A laugh from her sugars the stuffed air and her cheeks ache with the feeling. He joins along — a soft chuckle. His hair shakes with the backward movement of his head against the seat.</p><p>"You have swans?" An incredulous question.</p><p>"Black swans," his affirmation sends tears to her eyes.</p><p>They flow slow, but freely enough to make her wonder if they're from laughter or sadness.</p><p>Jimmy doesn't seem to notice. Reina sighs hard and occupies her blurred vision with the street name printed on the paper.</p>
<hr/><p>Jimmy makes her stay in the car while he scrounges an antique shop. The sign, a blue, crescent moon with the word <em>antiques</em> nailed around the curve, waves like a ship's sail in the wind.</p><p>If Reina squinches her eyes, she can make out Jimmy pacing through the window, which is obscured with knick-knacks she doesn't care to focus on.</p><p>She twists in the driver seat, irritable and exhausted in the same moment. As if to match her mood, grey rain clouds march across the sky into battle. Reina suddenly wishes Jimmy could drive so she could curl up into the backseat and fall asleep. She shuts her eyes, takes a breath, and rests her forehead on the steering wheel. Her mind clears. Frank Sinatra is singing of his blue moon on the radio and she is weightless. She forgets her mother, her sister, the band, Jimmy. Only her body and the sweet music of decades past.</p><p>The door creaks open and Jimmy seats himself beside her. She looks up at him and the brown paper bag he's holding.</p><p>"Thanks for waiting for me," he mumbles, driving his curls from his face with his hand.</p><p>"What's in there?" Reina leaves the parking lot and sets a mental course back to the airport. She doesn't even think of what Peter Grant or Robert will have to say when Jimmy and her return.</p><p>He hums and the sound is light like cumulus clouds. "Something special. I'm saving it for when we're alone together. Truly alone."</p><p>At a red light, she scans him, kisses him like a girl behind a school building.</p><p>"You're aggravating," she tells him against his lips.</p><p>"I've heard that before," he responds. "The light's green." The car behind them honks and she tosses her head.</p><p>"Do you mind if I don't watch the show tonight? I'm so tired."</p><p>"How easily you give up on me," he chides.</p><p>"It's horrid, I know." Raindrops begin to fall fiercely onto the windshield. Reina flicks the wipers and licks her lips. She's never liked driving in the rain.</p>
<hr/><p>To Reina's wondrous surprise, none seemed to pay attention to their absence, save Richard, who yelled of his stolen car until Peter couldn't ignore it anymore and asked Jonesy. And of course, he was the one who had seen them slip from the plane. But still, no excuses had to be given, no reprimanding to be made. They floated through the plane and Reina watched Jimmy collect his clothes, take some downers, for his nerves, he claimed, and follow a complaining Richard to the car.</p><p>"I didn't mess it up," Reina assures clinging to Jimmy with a weariness she can't shake.</p><p>"Oh, don't," Richard holds a hand up. "Bad girls don't get to speak."</p><p>Reina laughs and shakes her head.</p><p>"That's what he says in the bedroom," Jimmy whispers like a gossiping neighbor. She buries her face into his jacket.</p><p>The car ride seems quick, and like the first night, the men file and separate. Reina finds the near-empty dressing room, only occupied by roadies who've tired of the same frequent theatrics. </p><p>"It's been a long time since I rock and rolled," Robert's voice beats muffled into the microphone. Reina's sure she can hear the crowd roar in response as her eyes dip and she folds into herself on the couch.</p>
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<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Crossing the Pond</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A roadie's hand comes down on Reina's shoulder and she jumps with a start. </p><p>"God, sorry, chick. I was jus' waking you up to tell you they're coming back soon," he throws his hands from her, as if she's boiling oil, and gives her a sideways glance. His face is pock-marked and Reina thinks that he must have just recently got over a fit of bad acne. </p><p>"Thanks," she rises from the couch and feels the sudden sting of hunger overwhelm her. The food table sits across from her, filled with pans of savory meat and sweets she can't ignore.</p><p>She steps over and begins to paw at the pyramid of finger sandwiches. She's on her third when the double doors open and the band walks through, Bonzo first, then Jimmy, Robert, and Jonesy.</p><p>Their voices are loud, penetrating into the previously quiet room.</p><p>"Oi, don't eat all of them," Bonzo's holler comes and he fills the space behind her, his body overwhelming and pressing to her back. She looks at him and smiles, but he grabs her face and gives a wet kiss to her lips.</p><p>Reina laughs and clings to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and letting him sweep her up into a hug that takes her from the floor.</p><p>"So, it was a good show?" Her giggles burst out into the dressing room over Bonzo's head. He buries his face into her collarbone.</p><p>"Yeah, they loved us," Jimmy says and his hand tugs at a lock of her hair. "Come on down now and see me."</p><p>"You heard the man, come to ruin our fun." Bonzo slips her to the floor and she turns, holding out her arms for Jimmy. He's sweating, hair amassed in wet bundles and dripping onto his shoulders. His red, stripped shirt is soaked, as well, and his hips stick out as a perfect place for her arms to curve around.</p><p>His body hums with a post-show vibration and Reina finds herself saying, "I missed you," as she slithers him into her arms.</p><p>"Guess where we're going..." he pets the back of her head.</p><p>"I know," she says to his shirt, smelling his body — that mixed scent of cologne and stench.</p><p>He walks her backwards to the couch and flops down upon it, bringing her to sit on his lap. "I can't wait to be alone with you." He leans slightly from the couch and pulls her arm through the space between the cushion and his neck.</p><p>"Yeah?" Her other hand plays with his, the pad of her thumb pressing against his knuckles, her digits running gentle over his injured finger, damp from its frequent ice baths.</p><p>"Mmm-hmm. I have some things to show you."</p><p>"Like the black swans?" She catches a wet strand of hair between her fingers and twists.</p><p>Jimmy waves his hand at one of the roadies, "Pass that bottle to me." It's the same one who woke Reina up. He gives a narrow look to her position on top of Jimmy's lap and plants the whiskey in his waiting hand. Jimmy drinks heavily and Reina watches the brown liquid swish like a spurned ocean. "Swans," he sighs, breath hot and stinging on her cheek, "Books. Music. You know I'm allowing you a look into my private sphere."</p><p>His lips are swept and shiny and she moves to kiss him. "What can I give you in return?" She tells herself to remember the taste  — dark sweetness — and the feel — silk skin, gentle as the veined portion of his wrist that she kisses next. </p><p>"I can think of several things. But this," he pulls her close until their chins meet. Her tongue wavers in her mouth and his eyes are a green she's sure she's never seen before. ". . . this image of you on your knees and your lips around me, in front of everyone here . . . oh it delights me, Reina." </p><p>Reina releases a breath and a curl of arousal winds into her stomach. The man above her now, who is looking past his nose at her, is not the man from earlier today in the car. Double-sided, like a coin. "Then we should go back to the plane," she lowers away from him.</p><p>"We should, yes." He sets her beside him and takes a glug of the whiskey, calling Richard over and whispering in his ear. Reina sits watching. The band is supposed to be going home tonight; they seem to be indulging in the last drops of nectar before meeting their wives and children, gloating on powders and liquids and bodies.</p><p>Richard shoots Reina a smirk and tells them to follow. They rise and Reina holds tight to Jimmy's wrist, playing with the button holding the sleeve snug. Someone has put music on over the radio, Rod Stewart, Reina thinks by the rasp in his voice. Jimmy grabs his white jacket before they leave the dressing room.</p><p>Reina's not surprised to find girls like her mingling in the halls, their lips glossed and pouty and nails done perfect. One of them spots Jimmy and shouts. He smiles back.</p><p>"Oh, god, it's you," she comes running up to him, mixing her hands in the silk of his blazer. Her eyes seem to miss Reina beside him until Jimmy speaks.</p><p>"It's me," he agrees. "And I'm awfully busy at the moment. Perhaps someone else may appeal to your senses. You can find them just down this hall."</p><p>A mark of disappointment flashes in her eyes, but she hides it quick with a grin. The others behind her shuffle, make strong eye contact with Reina, and drift their gazes along the passage behind Jimmy.</p><p>"I may even be of service," Richard announces, running a hand over his chest. "I'm going back to the Starship now."</p><p>Their voices light at the mention of the jet and one brunette moves from the crowd. "Can I go with you?"</p><p>There's a moment of surveyance until Richard offers his hand. Reina finds herself in the eager uncertainty of the girl, a flashback to the Rainbow.</p><p>"You may, my dear. Come with us." Richard leads her along to the parking lot, where he sits her in the passenger seat and begins a long conversation. Reina turns to Jimmy and finds his glance lowered. She takes a chance and pulls the fabric just above his knee, her hand lying flat against taut inner skin. Boldness stabs at her nerves and she raises her grip to palm him. He's warm and hardening. He inhales through his nose.</p><p>Outside, the lights of the Strip shine red on Jimmy's cheekbones.</p><p>"Reina," he says, amidst the noise of the front seat.</p><p>"Yeah?" She circles him and he grows harder. She wants his pants off, wants to feel the soft whisper of hair on her hand, on her mouth as she leans down and takes him in.</p><p>"I was thinking of the first time I saw you." He spreads his legs wider. Reina pops the button of his jeans and unzips the zipper, hoping Richard and his new girl don't catch the itching sound. But it's dark in the car and if Jimmy can keep quiet, they can get away with it. "Such a pretty bird. With those large eyes. With that," he loses his words when her fingers creep into his underwear, "skilled hand."</p><p>Reina wraps him in her grasp and brings him from his pants. A thought interrupts: last month she wouldn't have believed she'd be seeing Jimmy's penis in front of her, hidden in the gloom of the car, but there, burning, long. She aches between her thighs. Her chest catches with a gasp.</p><p>Richard turns from the front seat and speaks, "Do you two — ah, fuckin' Christ. Everything has to be a fuckin' exhibition with you, Page. Jesus."</p><p>Reina eyes widen, her cheeks glow hot, Jimmy's hands collide with hers as they zip his pants up again.</p><p>"Why the fuck did you look, then?" Jimmy snarls.</p><p>"It's my goddamn car. For all I'd know you two could've been having an orgy in here this morning."</p><p>The girl whispers to Richard and he shrugs her off, grunting loud and pressing on the accelerator.</p><p>"I'm so sorry," Reina mumbles, more to Jimmy than Richard. Her hands are folded in her lap like dead birds, still imagining the sweep of Jimmy's porcelain skin.</p><p>His chest rises. "The Starship will be practically empty when we get there. I expect you to fill that silence with my name."</p><p>Lava seems to spill down into her abdomen. She doesn't look at him again until they exit Richard's car. She doesn't find his eyes until he rips her away from Richard and the brunette and heaps her into one of the theater chairs.</p><p>Jimmy winds a spool of film into the projector and waits until the title screen pops up. The words "Deep Throat" flash over a black background. He pushes his hair from his face and stalks to her — curled with legs uplifted on the chair — and tells her to keep her eyes open.</p><p>Reina cries his name. She cries his name like a cry for forgiveness. The blowjob scene progresses before her and she's falling to pieces — tells him too, in that hushed voice.</p><p>"Good," he says. "Good." The leather scrapes under her and her dress is bunched to her armpits, panties hanging pitiful from her leg. Her glance meets the actor's, then Jimmy's, heavy and accurate, like his thrusts, like his hand pressing her shoulder into the padded theater chair.</p><p>He tells her to fall when her breath is pushed into her skull. And she does, for him, coating him until she feels spent. Jimmy's hips mess with hers and he's pushing with desperate abandon. The actor moans and tilts his head back. Jimmy moans and tilts his head back and he looks angelic — hair swept from sweat, neck long and rigid with her name. Her name and no one else's. She holds his bare shoulders, expecting in her pleasured burden to find wings beneath them.</p><p>Flesh, the word as a word, comes to Reina's mind and flattens into her thoughts as he fills her hotly. His private sphere, all hers in a shudder. His private sphere, his limp, long body falling into the seat beside her. She lowers her dress with shaking fingers. The man on screen comes.</p><p>Jimmy flicks the projector off with the little remote and sits with her in breathy dark. She hears his exhales like a song. Time passes. He begins to snore.</p><p>Sometime during the night, after she's found a comfortable position on the seat, the plane sets off. Reina clutches Jimmy's limp hand.</p><hr/><p>As if from another world, Reina hears his voice, "We've landed."</p><p>Her eyes slip open and he's before her in his concert clothes, taking her panties from around her leg and bundling them up. She had completely forgotten...</p><p>"Jimmy?" Reina rises. Her knees almost lock and she pushes her arms to the ceiling of the plane. </p><p>"Darling?" He begins to walk from her, but the slow pace he keeps suggests he's waiting for her to step by his side.</p><p>The loving name makes her belly turn soft and she gravitates to him. "I'm happy to be here with you."</p><p>He enters the small room holding their suitcases and crouches down besides his, already discarding his shirt. The vertebrae of his spine knot from his bent back. She leans down to hug around him, skin so warm and lined red from the press of his shirt. "I'm happy to be here with you, as well, sweet. We have a long drive there, wear something comfortable." He returns her underwear and she presses them down into the corner of her suitcase, folded with her other soiled clothes. Her hand still holds to his back, as if she's afraid he might escape. </p><p>Reina opts for a peasant top and a long skirt, slipping her feet into sandals and waiting on the bed. Her mind draws to the future. </p><p>"The first thing we have to do when we get to your house is dance."</p><p>"Dance?" He laughs and stands, holding her bag out to her and tilting his head toward the body of the plane. His dark suit is a blackish color, paired with a light shirt beneath it. She's surprised he doesn't spend more time prepping himself. </p><p>"Yes," she takes the suitcase from him and follows. "I've wanted to dance with you since we met." The boys are already walking about, excitement fluttering among them. Robert slants against the organ, throwing candies into Jonesy and Bonzo's mouths in an alternating fashion. </p><p>"There he is," Robert announces and flings an M&amp;M at Jimmy. It hits his shoulder and falls to the floor. "Too slow, Jim-Jam."</p><p>"Try Reina," Jonesy calls.</p><p>Robert aims and Reina opens her mouth and ducks down to catch the projectile. Its hard outer shell crunches under her molars. </p><p>Jonesy applauds and she smiles in return, gives a curtsy, and looks out one of the windows of the plane. Jimmy is occupied in conversation with Peter, but their departure couldn't come fast enough. A dull sky presents itself to her, morning fog teasing the runway like a lover, and she presses the tips of her fingers to the glass. There is an entirely different world waiting beyond the jet and Reina could consume it all.</p>
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<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Partaking of Plumpton</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Green glory unfolding: the countryside makes itself known with a swell of hills on either side of the limousine. Hiding, the coy sun breaks from the clouds in kisses, illuminating briefly before disappearing. Reina holds her breath as a bicyclist passes and stamps the urge to press her finger to the window and point out a far off cluster of cattle to Jimmy.</p><p>He sits on her left side, his thigh warm against her own and his sights preoccupied with the Yeats collection.</p><p>She turns for a moment and catches him in statue-reverie. His hat sits beside him on the seat, allowing his hair, the ends of which are curling and shiny and made perfect for Reina's finger to wrap around, to flow free to his shoulders. He told her in the airport he needed to shave, but she thinks his stubble shows his age. Besides, whenever they kiss, it brushes against Reina's cheek with a maddening texture.</p><p>From her angle and the lack of sunshine, she can't catch the shadowed dimple in his chin, but she knows it's there and her lips pucker at the thought of praising it in intimacy. His nose curves upward, elegant, soft, like the pink tilt of his mouth, the downcast eyes, the dark brows.</p><p>Reina's chest flutters. She clears her throat and sets her palm on his thigh. Like a seer, he looks up, outward at her in a question of the world. The airport draws back thick to her mind and she sees the boys breaking off to their wives and children and her and Jimmy to the side, alone. He placed his hand in hers and in the moment before they found his driver outside, Reina felt like she was drawing a wish from a well.</p><p>"You are so beautiful," she breathes into the back seat of the car. </p><p>His smile is automatic and he lowers his gaze to her hand. A hum comes from the back of his throat. Reina's expecting a word of appreciation, but he merely asks, "So, which do you prefer? This or LA?"</p><p>"This," she gestures at the pastures, "isn't like anything I've seen before."</p><p>Jimmy's grin fails to fade. "It has a certain purity, I think. It's a right place to clear your mind. However much the States excite me it's always good to come home."</p><p>For a moment, Reina feels hot between her ears. The guilt tinges red-toned in her mind again, unfolds as Jimmy shuts the book and brings her into his arms.</p><p>"You could have picked anyone else to join you," she comments. Her fingers pick at a loose thread of the bandage covering his hand.</p><p>"But I chose you."</p><p>"But you chose me."</p><p>His fingers press to her face and she turns to stare up at him. His skin looks especially bloodless in the backseat of the car. "I've told you how special you are, Reina."</p><p>"I know," she gives a small smile and nuzzles his embrace like a kitten. "Thank you."</p><p>Jimmy kisses her head, then her lips, then each fingertip until he and her are wrapped around one another, sharing warmth and space and saliva.</p><p>"You live all alone?" The question presses to his cheek. His smell intoxicates, drawing the vision of their first meeting back to the forefront of Reina's memory.</p><p>"I do."</p><p>Her searching touch finds the hair beneath his collarbone and she spreads the fabric of his shirt, caressing the very top of his chest. "And it never gets lonely?"</p><p>Jimmy watches her exploration with calm eyes and wet lips. He makes a noise. "Loneliness is frightening to some, but not to me. I've always enjoyed being alone; a certain comfort comes from it. I was born alone, raised alone, and I will die alone."</p><p>She gives up finally and rests her head on his chest. His chin droops onto her hair. There's something she has to say, but the words are tied like floss around her teeth.</p><p>"Plumpton was owned by a soap baron before I purchased it. He was a horse-breeder too. And I've always liked homes with history; the wings were built in separate years using separate methods and materials. It's like crude time travel walking through the halls."</p><p>Beneath her, his soft voice vibrates through his chest. She's silent, waiting for him to continue.</p><p>He does. "The property is much more than just the manor. There's the wood behind it, the moat, the pasture... A little village sits down below the home. Mostly the elderly live there, but sometimes visitors come and play music or dance. It's almost medieval."</p><p>"Oh," Reina whispers. "We still have to dance."</p><p>He reaches down and combs her hair from her face. "What did you say, darling?"</p><p>Her eyes drift to the window: the sky is greyer than before and the first droplets of rain hit the glass and slide quivering down with the motion of the car.</p><p>"I said, we still have to dance," she breathes a little louder to Jimmy. Before he can respond, she clears her throat. "If any other person had asked me to go across the world with them I would have said no."</p><p>The engine hums and the raindrops fall faster, fatter. Jimmy's voice burdens her ear: that gentle soothing suggestion of something greater than the both of them. "There are certain instances when I believe meetings are meant to occur. I very much align myself with the fact that the first rehearsal with Zeppelin was something which had been waiting to be birthed."</p><p>Reina turns to take him in his sage form. Again, she feels incompetent staring into those green eyes. He shifts to the countryside. Her stomach hungers for something she can't explain.</p><p>"I hope the rain lets up soon," he murmurs and she nods in agreement, readdressing the book beside him. The last hour of the drive is spent reading in silence, although Reina's mind runs like the hares she spots out the window, leaping across the grass, struggling against the sound of the limousine. </p><p>But it all folds together as the tires crunch over a gravel road and Reina cranes her neck to receive the view of the manor. The car stops, she gets out, stretches and breathes the sweet earth-smell of the post-rainstorm air, and turns to gawk at the home. It's hidden away in its own forest, surrounded by water and green weeping trees. A long bridge stretches to the front door and on either side of it bunches of flowers burst rain-dipped and white from the dark leaves of the bushes. </p><p>Behind her, the car silences and the driver shuts the door behind him. In another situation, she would curl away in embarrassment of being served, but she eagerly takes the bags and the mumble of Miss that he offers her. </p><p>Jimmy appears after a moment and takes her free hand.</p><p>"Do you like it?"</p><p>She squeezes his palm. "It's beautiful."</p><p>"Would you like to see the swans?"</p><p>A giddiness rocks her heels. "Of course. Will you take me on a tour?"</p><p>Jimmy laughs with his face to the grey sky and almost forgets to pay the driver as the limousine pulls from the road. Turning back to her, he nods his head. "Follow me, my dear."</p><p>She steps after him, looking over the moat at the water below. Her reflection, wavered, glances up in response. Birds flit between the trees above in play and a rolling wind sends green leaves into the air, whirling past Reina's view of dark Jimmy who messes with his keys at the door.</p><p>Finally, he enters and waits for Reina in slight shadow. She doesn't hesitate, passing over the threshold and breathing an initial smell of ancientness. The entranceway is stone and traps the empty coldness of the house.</p><p>Jimmy places his bag near the door and Reina does the same, leaving his side to explore. The living room is lightly toned with a huge window overlooking the pond and a sofa. What she's drawn to is the turntable and speaker. She licks at her lips and returns to retrieve her albums from their place in her luggage.</p><p>"May I?" She asks Jimmy. He stands, arms crossed, watching her with her stackful of records.</p><p>"Go ahead," he gestures to the turntable. "You haven't told me if you like the inside yet."</p><p>"Oh, I like it. There's just. . ." Her fingers concentrate on pulling the vinyl from its paper case and carefully placing it atop the turntable. Between two fingers, she drops the needle on the grooves and waits until the familiar piano intro begins. She faces him, pushes her sandals under the coffee table and holds out her hands.</p><p>His eyebrows rise in recognition and he drifts to her, palms falling on top of hers.</p><p>Billie Holiday's voice fills the chilled room, prickles at Reina's spine. She had always imagined herself dancing with a man to this song.</p><p>"<em>All of me</em>," Billie bemoans, "<em>why not take all of me</em>?"</p><p>Reina begins to loosen, her feet taking the space where Jimmy's once were. She places his hands at her hips and wraps her own around his neck.</p><p>"<em>Can't you see, I'm no good without you</em>?"</p><p>"I've always loved this song," she tells Jimmy. Her toes scrape the carpet as she moves, slow dancing with him, pulling him forward then pushing him back.</p><p>"Mmm, yeah. It's nice," he says.</p><p>"<em>Take my lips, I want to lose them</em>."</p><p>A kiss to the corner of his mouth. "Do you not like this?"</p><p>She doesn't wait to rest her head upon his shoulder, connecting with him, chest-to-chest. They've been so close to one another since last night. Her hips sway against his with the backwards want of bare skin.</p><p>"<em>Take my arms, I'll never use them</em>."</p><p>"I do, Reina," he slips his hand down to curve around her ass, then trails the path of her spine to tangle in her hair.</p><p>The song fizzles out with the final notes and lyrics, leaving Reina's senses all focused to Jimmy's lean figure. Like the grounds after the rain, he's sweet and musky. His hair tickles her face, his fingers are spread to hold her to him.</p><p>"I have a gift for you," she whispers. "Something I forgot about yesterday."</p><p>Reina disconnects slightly, unweaving her trapping arms from his neck. The song shifts on the turntable. She brushes her lips to his neck. He breathes in sharply, throat moving under her touch. A single swipe of her tongue tastes his salty skin, but she doesn't stay on her feet, dropping, instead, to her knees and searching blindly behind her for a cushion from the couch to place underneath. Her gaze finds Jimmy's eyes dark, but this time there's no post-show adrenaline fueling the look. There's the damp cold of the manor, the silence save Billie Holiday, and Reina's fingers already unbuttoning his pants and forcing them from his hips.</p><p>"What about feeding the swans, darling?" Jimmy asks. His hands begin to lower as well until he's cradling her face with a light pressure.</p><p>"Later," she supplies. "I just want to make you feel better."</p><p>"I see. Returning the favor?"</p><p>She slides his pants to his ankles, moves her hands up his thin calves and pinches the fabric of his underwear, pressed taut against his thigh, between forefinger and thumb.</p><p>"Returning the favor," she mumbles and looks up at him.</p><p>He inhales, his stomach tightening and the hardness she's fondling growing hotter and stiffer.</p><p>Reina bites her lip. The last words she tells him before she takes him in her mouth: "Yours was my first to suck. I thought you might like hearing that."</p><p>Her name trips loose from his lips. A hum occupies her mind. A path of possibility opens to her.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Sharing the Space</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It is midday and the sunlight shines unobscured like a beacon onto the sheets of the master bedroom.</p><p>Reina stretches under the covers, finding her body again and pulling at the light fabric of her peasant top. She remembers falling asleep beside Jimmy, both of them fully clothed, and cradling him like a child would a toy.</p><p>A sleepy sigh breaks her lips and she turns to bury her face in the adjacent pillow, which smells of Jimmy's citrus shampoo.</p><p>"Alright," she mumbles to no one and rises from the bed, sweating and flush in the heat. The tile below cools her bare feet and comforts the action of padding into the kitchen. She takes a glance out the window and sees the lake in shining beauty, sunlight sparkling from it, but most importantly, the black swans cleaning their feathers near the grassy banks.</p><p>A basket full of baked goods sits on the kitchen corner with a magenta ribbon tied around the handle. Besides the blueberry scones, with their dashings of sugar, a golden loaf of bread makes Reina's mouth water. The pastries have already been picked at, she discovers when reaching the counter, but the bread is uncut and untouched. There's a knife in its stand and Reina takes it like King Arthur taking the sword from the stone. </p><p>A domesticity burns in her chest. The kitchen is quiet, bright, and lonely and she wipes the crumbs from her toasted bread with a tea rag. She eats while she walks, pressing her foot into the living room carpet to make marks and wandering back to the bedroom to find a hairclip from her bag. She figures it will be a syrupy day. </p><p>Before she leaves the house, she waits for Jimmy to come find her, but no one fills in the silence. She grabs another slice of bread and shuts the door. A collection of insects buzzes about the lawn: dragonflies close to the wet earth, butterflies splitting the blue of the sky with their colorful wings, and bumblebees hovering above the bushes in access to the fleshed insides of the white flowers. </p><p>Reina stays a moment to breathe. This semi-wilderness, she decides, is exactly what she needed. Stone steps turn to soil turns to grass as she migrates to the pond. A little arm of land connects the two forested banks, but she doesn't venture far enough to reach it, only crossing the stone bridge and kneeling as if in prayer to the house.</p><p>The swans are long-necked coy things, pulling the water with them in an urge to part from Reina, but she offers a reaching hand and a click of her tongue. Their orange eyes survey. Her other hand clenches at the bank, fingers folding into mud, until finally, one sways to her and tears the bread crust from the slice.</p><p>Her knee slips in the grass and she throws the rest of the bread into the water. The swans immediately circle, bills red and alarming among the black feathers and dark pond. She watches them, maybe half a dozen, and wonders who was feeder in Jimmy's absence.</p><p>But her skirt is soiled, dark at the knees in two loose circles. Her top has dropped from her shoulder, portraying the fold where her arm meets her torso. She rights it and catches the hem of her skirt in her hands before wandering back to the house.</p><p>"Jimmy," she finally calls in the entranceway. And again in the kitchen. There's much of the house she hasn't explored yet, and a long hallway catches her attention. Splitting from it is a set of steps that lead to a door.</p><p>It opens and Reina grips her skirt tight in preparation of anyone but Jimmy. But he smiles, hands fishing at the buttons of his shirt, and the warmth of the day seems to finally catch up to her.</p><p>"Good morning," she lingers, eyes low beneath her bangs.</p><p>"Good afternoon," he corrects, "it's near one. You've slept all day." His gaze falls. "And you were outside with the swans I presume."</p><p>"I was. They're very beautiful." Her mind trips on Jimmy's image. He's angelic in pastel.</p><p>He walks up the steps to her, takes her hands in his. "Perhaps you should clean up."</p><p>"Will you bathe with me, then?"</p><p>Jimmy shakes his head and laughs, starts to walk them to the master bath. "I washed this morning. While you were still dead asleep. I can bathe you if you'd like."</p><p>"God, I would feel like a child if you did." But really, the thought of him beside her makes her knees sting. There's something base in being taken care of. Reina could gorge herself on the opportunity.</p><p>The bathroom, much like the bed, is washed in light and carries a distinctness of clarity in the tall mirror above the sink and the mint leaves dried and jarred for a future bath.</p><p>"Nonsense," Jimmy mutters, body at her back. Suddenly, her skirt is pooled to her feet, yanked down by his quick hands. "You're drowsy. I'm sure you couldn't lift the soap if you tried."</p><p>He frames her bare hips with his hands, and in turn, she bites her lip to keep quiet. The blouse follows its predecessor to the floor and Jimmy passes her naked form to turn the water on. The faucet gushes into the large metal tub, steams after a moment of running, and Jimmy looks back at her.</p><p>"How has your first day been so far?"</p><p>"Mmm," her eyes brush the softness of the towels, as if to manifest them onto her skin. But this is vacation, she reminds herself. This is not the city. Her shoulders roll back, breasts full to the sun behind the window. She hears Jimmy hum and watches his eyes lift in an approving smile. "The continental breakfast was sub-par. But the butler is quite attentive. Handsome, too. I must say he's secretive, though, hiding down in that little unknown room."</p><p>He raises his hand, "Ahh, sorry, Miss. We've had yet to go down to the market and stock the ice box. The breakfast, though, came at an opportune time from the old neighbor. As for the wait staff. . . his little room. Well, he'll show you himself after your bath."</p><p>"And he's gentlemanly. Perhaps you should think about raising his wages."</p><p>Jimmy's head tilts with a roll of his eyes. He sits on the edge of the tub and pulls at the fabric of his trousers. "You're a silly girl."</p><p>"I know," she huffs and pads to him. "That's what everyone's always thought of me."</p><p>"Yeah?" He fondles a raised bridge in his pants, flattens it with his palms. "What was your childhood like?"</p><p>Reina's stunned by his outward question. The water loops and doubles, fills the air with noise and wet heat. His thighs appeal, and she steps between them.</p><p>"I miss being a child sometimes. Without worry, without thought of the future or the past. It's plain living. It's safe."</p><p>Jimmy's thumbs sweep her cheeks, as if to keep any burgeoning tears at bay while his legs squeeze her to him.</p><p>"But I grew up with my sister who is four years older than me, so I grew up fast with her. My friends were my own until I reached junior high and then suddenly I was talking to older boys with mustaches and sideburns and the coolest cars you've ever seen." Reina suddenly feels hot with embarrassment.</p><p>But Jimmy's eyes are clear and wide. He twists a lock of her hair around his forefinger. There's dirt, she notices, beneath his nails.</p><p>"...and I was desperate to be a ballerina. It was my dream. But then I left school, had my first boyfriend, started working, and forgot dance."</p><p>"Boyfriend?" Jimmy stops his touches and waits.</p><p>"His name was Sam. But it's not important." Reina swipes away his concern with a hand.</p><p>"But you told me I was..."</p><p>The steam blurs the bathroom wall behind Jimmy, mixing with the clouded sunlight, turning the room much darker than it was before. Reina breathes.</p><p>"That never meant you were my first lover."</p><p>He pulls his hair-wrapped finger to his lips and kisses it. "Why didn't you tell me?"</p><p>"You go first. Who was yours?"</p><p>Another roll of his eyes. The apples of his cheeks dust with red, but he raises a defensive hand. "I need to be high to tell this story."</p><p>"Fine," Reina gives, pulling from him and trying the water. It gnaws at her foot with a comfortable burn and she slips in and sits. Only her outstretched legs and hips are covered. "I'm guessing it was horrible."</p><p>He turns to lean over her. "It was not. It's only something I have to view from a different angle. Now this Sam boy?"</p><p>It's Reina's turn to sigh and complain. She starts at their first meeting: her as a hostess and Sam as a rancher passing through Tucson. They did that sometimes — stomping in with their cowboy boots and heavy coppery accents, imitations of James Dean in Giant.</p><p>"A real vision of Americana, I'm sure," Jimmy states, picking the bar of soap from the window sill.</p><p>"You didn't grow up there. You don't get it. But I really believed I was in love with him until I realized he didn't have what I wanted."</p><p>"And what was it that you wanted?" He takes her hair and moves it from her back before lathering the tan skin with soap.</p><p>His touch is always what she wants, she realizes. An in-between of roughed and smooth, knuckle-bends callused over, palms soft, fingers long and hot. Reina curls forward so that he can reach her spine.</p><p>"Escape, I think. From my house. From Tucson. But he wanted to stay, and he did, and I haven't see him in two years."</p><p>The water is up to her shoulders and holds a warmth that loosens the muscles of her abdomen. Jimmy steps forward, tennis shoes squeaking across the tile, and turns the faucet off.</p><p>"And the first time you made love?" He asks.</p><p>Reina faces the window in a sort of response, but opens her mouth: "Not what I was expecting. Not as cataclysmic."</p><p>"If it had been with me, instead..."</p><p>"Maybe," she whips her head back to him with a laugh. His eyes are glazed and dark. Something hides within them that prevents her from looking away.</p><p>"The band went to Sweden for the Gold Record Ceremony. For Houses of the Holy. It was held at this sex club and a couple were tangled together right in front of us. I made eye contact with the woman. She was being impaled by the man above her, her mouth open wide and her gaze stuck to me, body alert and stretched. I felt her pleasure in translation."</p><p>Reina pulls the picture together in her mind and feels sick at the prospect of Jimmy being a voyeur. She suddenly is stolen, exposed, in the bathtub. Her heart beats as fast as it did on their first meeting. She crosses her arms over her chest.</p><p>"The room. You wanted to see it?" Jimmy's voice comes again, much colder than before. He stands from his kneeling position and looks womanish in the light colors. Reina catches her mistake and swallows.</p><p>"Yes, but I know what you're saying. Something so strong you can feel it."</p><p>He shrugs and finds a towel from beneath the sink. "Shame about Sam." He unfolds it like he's readying a shroud and holds it out and open. "The basement's been converted to a home studio. I'm running through old tapes: bits and pieces of songs that failed to make the cut."</p><p>"Oh, that sounds interesting." She stands and the added weight of the water drips off. Her skin seems to tighten around her bones and she reaches hurriedly for the towel. Afraid to slip on the tile, she grips out for Jimmy's hand and he offers it, watching her. She thinks he's lived his life in images, always observing, always taking in.</p><p>"Come with me," he gestures to the hall and she walks, wrapping the towel around her torso.</p><p>She leaves drops of water behind her like a breadcrumb trail and stops to warm herself on the long rug in the middle of the passage. Jimmy disappears down the small stairway and calls up to her.</p><p>The door's open and she is able to see the magnitude of electronic equipment: speakers, spools of tape, amps, stacks of something she can't identify. Along the wall, as in all the rooms, sits a long window, but this one has a bluish film over it.<br/>
Jimmy meanders around for a moment before looking back to Reina.</p><p>"Well, come in."</p><p>She nods and moves her sopping hair over her shoulder.</p><p>"Now," Jimmy says. His hand rests on a mixing board. "Please don't touch anything."</p><p>"I wouldn't," Reina scoffs back and separates to the other end of the room. It's only her first day at Plumpton and she assures herself things will change. She'll ask Jimmy about the village, maybe take a walk by herself, or stay occupied with housework while he tinkers in the studio.</p><p>Her fingers reach out to brush the neck of a Gibson, but her arm snaps away, eyes going to find Jimmy. He doesn't face her. It's only the first day</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Unknowing in the Known</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Reina sees him, knows him. Jimmy is stained glass through the window, folding in the dark of the night, wearing a forest green jacket, looking at the sky with the vision of a philosopher.</p><p>Inside Plumpton Manor, the kitchen chair squeaks with Reina's weight. The heels she slips on are velvet, a gift from her high school graduation, and remind her of home. It seems distant, is distant. Reina breathes and readies herself for a dinner with Jimmy.</p><p>The afternoon closed with his voice pressing into her mind, fingers sweeping over her bare arms as he held her on his lap and repeated dull scriptures of amplifiers. His thigh was skinny enough for her legs to spread over it and her toes to brush the floor.</p><p>She's small again, trotting to the front door with an emotional pain thick on her tongue. Outside, the air is losing its steam. Outside, Jimmy migrates to her and slides his gaze across her form.</p><p>"Remind me where we're going for dinner," Reina demands. A heavy strand of hair crosses her face. She pulls it away and glances at the moon. It's waning. Or waxing. She can't tell. She hasn't checked since she's been with Jimmy; his face is as luminescent as its surface.</p><p>"It's a small place outside of the village, before we reach the city. I've been going there for a while. They have excellent racks of lamb."</p><p>The car moans into the drive of the manor, stopping before the bridge. The driver steps out and waits with the back door held open.</p><p>"Can you not drive?" She asks suddenly, catching Jimmy's attention with a hand on his forearm.</p><p>He shakes his head and rolls his eyes away, quickly settling in the back seat and bringing her on top of him.</p><p>The forced intimacy blurs her. He's embarrassed, hiding it with kisses to her neck. The car starts again and pulls to the road.</p><p>"Stop interrogating me," he says. He sucks on the skin where her neck meets her shoulder. Her breath speeds into her lungs and the muscles of her stomach clench.</p><p>"You must hate journalists, then."</p><p>"Very much." Reina wonders if all men's lips are as soft as his. "They all want to uncover you piece by piece, until you're exposed, naked and bare in front of them. And that's when they take pictures."</p><p>She doesn't respond. Her insides roll when he licks, kisses, and slides his hand up the long skirt of her dress.</p><p>"How would you like that?" He asks. "Maybe I can take some photographs of you when we return."</p><p>"Oh," she whispers. It's all she can manage in the tight space of the backseat. She shifts and his thigh is warm. How did she get here?</p><hr/><p>The restaurant is dark and the hostess seats them in a back booth with a small, dangling light above. Reina slides across from Jimmy and stares at the words of the menu.</p><p>Being with him makes her, for the first time, uncomfortable. He's burdened by the shadows, face slipped in darkness: a painting spurring uneasiness.</p><p>She tells herself to get out of her head and decides rapidly on the steak. Under the table, the toe of his shoe brushes her shin.</p><p>"What's wrong?" He asks.</p><p>"Do you know how long we'll be here before the second leg of the tour?"</p><p>"Leaving me already?" Even though she doesn't look, she can imagine the glimmer in his eyes. Deep green turned meadowy.</p><p>"No, I mean, is there something I can do during the day? Besides just staying inside?"</p><p>Before Jimmy can speak, the waiter arrives and jots down their orders, disappearing among the tables afterwards.</p><p>Jimmy clears his throat and sweeps his pink tongue across his lips before speaking. "Of course. You can explore the village. I hadn't realized you'd dislike Plumpton so much."</p><p>"I don't dislike it," she says too quickly. She can sense the joy he takes from seeing her fumble. "I just, if we're going to be staying here for a while I figured I should have something to do with myself."</p><p>"When was the last time you've been on holiday?"</p><p>The drinks arrive, dark whiskey for Jimmy and a beer for Reina. Her lip catches on the lip of the glass bottle.</p><p>"I don't know. A long time ago."</p><p>"Consider this a holiday, then, Reina." He's playing advisor, long, long fingers wrapped around his glass.</p><p>I know, she thinks. She's told herself all this before. Her gaze shifts across the restaurant.</p><p>"There are the little markets in the village..." he continues. "Ask around."</p><p>Reina's head turns at this news and she smiles bluntly. "Thanks."</p><p>She's grateful when the food gives her an excuse for silence, but watches Jimmy, those lithe hands picking at his meal. After a moment, he swallows, his plate still half full, and presses towards her in the yellow glow of the lamp.</p><p>"Come off of it, Reina. Pouting looks unbecoming on you." He doesn't smile.</p><p>She shifts in the seat and furrows her brows. "Why can't you just be clear with me? Everything has to be a game, a subtle remark, a hidden look. I've been honest with you. . ."</p><p>He sips before replying. "So you want clarity?"</p><p>"Yes." A sliver of her regrets speaking up and feels open and vulnerable in Jimmy's eyes. But she crosses her legs and folds her arms over her chest.</p><p>Jimmy hums and traces the handle of the fork. It's a simple movement, but it chills Reina. "Alright. Hurry and finish your food."</p><p>She follows his command and fills her stomach. The food is what she needed to stamp her nerves. Her glance, half-afraid, half-excited, doesn't dare meet his face.</p><p>He rises soon after and pays at the counter. Reina's dress sticks to the booth before she can get up and follow. She's been following for a while now: him, her sister, her dancing dream. She sticks her pinkie into her mouth and licks a stain of sauce from it. Jimmy lets his hand fall behind him and she grabs on carefully, allows him to take her from the restaurant into the summer night-heat.</p><p>"Jim," Reina breathes. They stand on the sidewalk, alone amid a weary passing of people. She says his name so much she thinks it might be the only constant thought in her brain.</p><p>He pulls her along, walking until they find a small alley between two buildings, and pressing into the very back corner. They're in darkness again. Heavy-handed, solid, bitter. Jimmy's breath is laced with heat. Reina's body withers in his arms.</p><p>"The driver should be here in a half-hour," he says and kisses her. Through her dress, his palms fondle.</p><p><em>Everything can be solved with sex</em>, her sister had said once after a fight with her boyfriend.<em> He's angry? Pull back the covers. He's sad? Take off your dress. He's happy? Make him happier by putting your hand down his pants.</em> Reina had giggled at the time. It couldn't be so simple.</p><p>Jimmy's forehead knocks her own when he hastily slips his tongue into her mouth. A muffled groan leaves her and the fear of being seen, heard, observed, makes her clutch his shoulders.</p><p>He lowers his hips and her legs catch onto them, his hands slithering down to hold her tight against the building wall. His lips leave with a string of saliva that breaks and hangs down her chin. It could be hers or his or both, but it's cold and primal and makes Reina's eyes open. She sees his curls beneath her, his shoulders and back curved to keep her up. She's on a ledge, her mind and body stopped.</p><p>But pleasure trips along her nerve endings. Jimmy's face is buried in her chest and his tongue is flat-pressed to her exposed nipple. Her brows pull together. To be wanted and craved is a gift and Reina swims in the moment.</p><p>Jimmy rarely speaks when they make love; the only noises his mouth makes are licentious, wet hums. He presses his lips to Reina's left breast, removing it from the stiff cotton of her dress and pushing his pelvis against her at the same time.</p><p>Again, she thinks of their first time: mirrored, in awe of him, nervousness like a poison in her veins. And then surrounding him, having him, being with him. Being and being and being.</p><p>"Lift your dress," he groans and she's with him again, losing one protective hand to hold the skirt to her hips. His eyes track her face briefly before they lower to the button of his pants.</p><p>She nods and uses one hand to unhook the fabric and pull the zipper with a slowness that must ache. Her hips instinctively rise when she realizes he isn't wearing underwear.</p><p>Oh. She touches him with the pads of her fingers: up his shaft until she gathers the shininess at the head. He whimpers into a breath and watches, half-lidded, when she peels her panties to the side and squeezes his shoulder. Nothing could prevent him from burying himself inside of her. It's total, necessary. She's full.</p><p>Reina gasps and nearly loses her balance against the wall; inside her heels, her toes curl to keep herself up. His voice breaks smoky in her ear: desperate, leaky noises. His chest rises and falls a dozen times before he shifts his hips up.</p><p>Jimmy's rhythm is constant. All Reina can do is paint the alleyway with her sighs, bruise-purple, like the sky above. He is, she decides, overwhelming in a glorious way as his face falls to her shoulder and she steals the moment to touch his stubble, pull on the shell of his ear, find his pulse rabbiting beneath skin. Her sister was right. Sex cures everything, especially the taste of anguish.</p><hr/><p>Returning to Plumpton, Reina pulls her hair up and undresses in the master bedroom. Shortly after, Jimmy finds her. A bottle of red wine is tucked under his arm and he carries two full glasses in his hands.</p><p>It's something Reina always imagined. It's romance movies and love songs. She smiles and sits on the bed.</p><p>"Remember I told you I had something for us?" Jimmy is jacketless and his hair is wind-mussed.</p><p>She nods, "Was it the wine?"</p><p>"Oh, no, darling. Wait for me." He turns and steps into the hall. Reina pulls the sheets over her naked body and lies on her side, watching for Jimmy's reappearance. Her mind creates his present: something sexual, oil or toys or rope, or some paints and a canvas, so he could take up the hobby again. She'd be model, of course. She licks her lips and receives the heated fruit-taste of the red. She'd like that, she thinks, to be his muse.</p><p>Instead, he returns with a book in his hand. He climbs next to Reina in the bed and sits up against the pillows. She copies him.</p><p>There's a nearly plain, tan cover on the front. In dark ink, a rectangle filled with odd designs holds the title.</p><p>"What is this?" Reina asks. <em>Liber Al vel Legis</em>, the book reads. What is she supposed to be looking for?</p><p>"The Book of the Law," Jimmy translates. "What do you know of mysticism?" Something hides in his voice: a velvet excitement.</p><p>Reina shakes her head and takes another sip of wine. "Nothing."</p><p>The pages crackle when he opens the book. "Then I'll have to teach you. What he offers in here is magnificent; a new vision of the world. Only several copies have been produced. But I found it, as if it wanted me to."</p><p>Her glass is almost drained. Jimmy's enthralled, hands moving through the pages, marveling, gathering.</p><p>"Who is 'he?'" She dares to ask. She shifts and presses into him to find some familiarity.</p><p>Jimmy doesn't turn to her, but his mouth moves mindlessly, as if he's said the name on repeat. "Crowley."</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Doing What Thou Wilt</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The days pass, folding into one another as the month carries on in damp heat.</p>
<p>Reina spends nearly all twenty-four hours with Jimmy, save the six she uses at the market, selling heavy strawberries alongside an old woman. It's something to do, and she earns a little weekly money to buy books or new clothes. Besides, she feels necessary standing with her hair pulled away in a hat or scarf: hidden American hiding behind the fat fruits lining the stall.</p>
<p>More than anything, it prepares her for Jimmy's nightly lessons.</p>
<p>"Another," he says. They're sprawled across the big bed with one another, Reina's head on his stomach and her fingers slithering back and forth along the denim of his jeans.</p>
<p>"Um. 'Magick is the Science and Art of understanding oneself...'"</p>
<p>"No, Reina. 'Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will,' but you've already said that one. Give me another." Jimmy caresses her hair, pulling it away from her neck and mixing his hand in the wisps at the base.</p>
<p>"Alright. 'Every intentional act is a Magical act.' Right?" Her head tilts to view him. In school she had a crush on her history teacher: dark-haired and professional, praising when she scored well on essays. She clenches her teeth and closes her eyes when Jimmy sweeps a finger over her right brow.</p>
<p>"Right, darling. Good. And what do you take from that?"</p>
<p>She's not even sure. "So, this," her grip drifts to his in front of her face, "is Magick?"</p>
<p>"We can say that. It has an outside intention. You are doing more than just touching me. I am doing more than just touching you."</p>
<p>The week is starting again. It's Sunday and the sunlight has only kept her in bed. Jimmy still wears his pants from yesterday.</p>
<p>His words return. "The director of the film is coming to visit me Tuesday."</p>
<p>"The film?" Reina questions. "Are you acting now?"</p>
<p>"In a way."</p>
<p>The Crowley book sits on the nightstand and she's thankful to be back down on Earth.</p>
<p>Jimmy wriggles beneath her and she sits up, cross-legged. He shaved yesterday and there's a pink spot on the stretched skin beneath his chin.</p>
<p>"Which reminds me," he continues, "I'll have to find my hurdy-gurdy." He begins to rise and turns back to look when Reina lets out a laugh that breaks the stillness of the bedroom.</p>
<p>"What, Jimmy? What movie?"</p>
<p>"I thought I told you. Peter wants us to have a film. It'll mostly be filmed at the Madison Square Garden in July, but there are home movie parts. I've already spoken with the director."</p>
<p>"Really? And what's a hurdy-gurdy?"</p>
<p>He smiles, mouth risen in a half-smirk, and gestures towards the hall. "Come outside and I'll show you. But bring the book."</p>
<p>Reina gathers her shoes from beneath the bed and slips Magick in Theory and Practice under her arm.</p>
<p>So far, she's learned that she must do what she wills, or something along those lines. It's all intriguing, but Jimmy catches her when she's tired after work and couldn't care to listen anymore about Aleister and Rose. But still, she stays, to listen to Jimmy's voice and trace circles around his navel as he reads and makes her repeat.</p>
<p>"There are four duties," he'll say. "Name them."</p>
<p>"Your duty to yourself, to others, to mankind, and. . ." She always forgets the last and Jimmy will have to coach her.</p>
<p>". . .to all other. . .?"</p>
<p>". . .beings and things."</p>
<p>Reina follows the small earthen bridge to the other side of the moat. Out here, it's like a fantasy novel. Tolkein, or something else that she never cared to read.</p>
<p>Jimmy's already sitting beneath one of the large maples, a smallish instrument in his lap and his face hidden by his fallen hair. Besides the jeans and colored t-shirt, he's an ancient poet. Reina stops and stands in front of him.</p>
<p>During her stay in Plumpton, she often forgets he's as old as he is. The roundness of his face and his still, opened-eyed expression leaves her without words for a moment. They're both looking for something. Reina lowers herself to the damp grass. Jimmy's gaze follows and shimmers as his brow bone passes under a ray of speckled light.</p>
<p>"At the beginning, you were threatening to leave me." He fondles the instrument, fingers sweeping across the strings and securing at the other end. It's wooden and richly decorated. Reina thinks it must be a hundred years old. "How do you feel now, dear?" He finishes.</p>
<p>"I'm fine. It's good to be here with you." She adjusts her position next to him.</p>
<p>"You're relaxing?"</p>
<p>"Yes, I think so. Maybe. . ." she turns her head away and looks out across the green landscape. She feels like William Blake discovering the world. "We could come out here and smoke some grass?"</p>
<p>"Maybe," Jimmy agrees. A high, whining sound spins suddenly into the bird-chirped air. Reina looks back to see Jimmy turning the crank at the end of the instrument and pulling a string. He stops for a moment and regards his ring finger before moving back to the song.</p>
<p>Reina stares. Jimmy's long lashes still when his eyes study the position of his hand. His mouth closes and his breath is steady. She has to watch carefully to see his chest rise. Her own chest rises, but with something else. Her head falls back against the bark of the tree and she picks at the grass like a bored child.</p>
<p>"Kings played these," he says above the music. "Two at a time because the things were so large. One man would turn the crank and the other would play the melody."</p>
<p>She opens her mouth, but he isn't finished.</p>
<p>"Why don't you meditate some? To be in connection with others is to be in connection with yourself, agreed?"</p>
<p>She fights the urge to push his hair from his face, like pulling a curtain to let the light in, and mumbles, "Agreed."</p>
<p>The sun turns her eyelids pink when she closes them. She sets a hand over her face and it's dark. Her mind spins for a while too long and she takes her palm away and listens.</p>
<p>The melody reminds Reina of being high. It's like she's caught between the real and the imagination-created.</p>
<p>With her eyes still shut, her head drops to Jimmy's shoulder. His hair is freshly-washed and slightly damp with humid, frizzing curls. She has something to say to him but forgets the words.</p>
<p>The hurdy-gurdy stops and Reina's eyelids part to see the nature before her: overarching trees, a lone squirrel scrambling up a branch, the orange flowers she can't name.</p>
<p>"How was that?" Jimmy's there again.</p>
<p>"I liked it. I like being this way with you, I think."</p>
<p>His long leg presses to hers. She can't believe the first time she saw him was in a photograph.</p>
<p>"Good. Y'know, Reina, you've been such a good student these past days," he states, "I thought I might reward you."</p>
<p>"Yeah?" She tears apart a dead leaf.</p>
<p>"Yeah. Care to dance?"</p>
<p>It's not what she was expecting, but a smile spreads across her face. "How could I say no?"</p>
<p>Jimmy's grin matches hers and he helps her to her feet, the hurdy-gurdy tucked under an arm. She loves his eyes so much; they tell her everything at once, so intense she can't make it all out.</p>
<p>"I feel like we're children. In our own little Garden of Eden," she whispers, walking back with him to the house.</p>
<p>He gives a humming noise to her and she presses on:</p>
<p>"I like when it's just us alone. This is how everyone was meant to live, I think."</p>
<p>He opens the side door and they enter with a creak. He asks, "You think so? We are all on a quest for our own inner knowledge?"</p>
<p>"Yes." She parts, picks The Everly Brothers from her collection. She sets the record down gently and drops the needle at the start of a song. A violin begins "Let It Be Me" and she swallows before taking Jimmy's hands.</p>
<p>This time, they don't speak, and the silence causes a thousand other things to break through Reina's mind. For now, it's almost holy, pure, simple. But a feeling nudges her between the ribs. She opens her mouth to linger a kiss against Jimmy's clothed shoulder. Who is he? Without the bow, the liquor, the book she forgot against the tree trunk? Is the man she's dancing with really him? He squeezes her waist. His voice comes as the song ends:</p>
<p>"The book, Reina."</p>
<hr/>
<p>In the bedroom nine hours later, Jimmy lights a candle and steps around the bed. She made lunch for them both, a salad with the left-over vegetables she takes from work, and listened to Jimmy playing in the studio while she tried to draw.</p>
<p>Now, Jimmy is at the foot of the king mattress, his arms at his sides as he watches.</p>
<p>"This is a lesson in control," he offers.</p>
<p>Reina takes a deep breath and brings her gaze to the window. It's pitch-black outside, save the white, beaming moon. Lying on her stomach, the world feels heavy. Even heavier is the oiled palm she finds being pressed to her back.</p>
<p>"No noise," Jimmy advises. "None or I'll stop."</p>
<p>This is Jimmy's own mantra, his own book. Crowley is pleasure in excess, but Jimmy wants it all to himself. Reina's breath filters into the pillow.</p>
<p>Jimmy keeps his path steady across her shoulders, teasing the areas knotted from carrying baskets, and then weaves down to press to her spine. She wonders where he learned to give massages. Each vertebra receives the sweep of his thumb, followed by a kiss, and all she wants is to sigh out loud.</p>
<p>His lips stop and trail the curve of her hip while his hands take her calves and wash tension from them. No one, she could gasp, has ever wanted to make her feel pleasure like this.</p>
<p>"Tomorrow begins the real work. I've been awful lenient with you, don't you think?"</p>
<p>He pauses. She wonders if she should answer.</p>
<p>"Mmm, girl." His cheek is bare and heavenly against the side of her thigh. "What's more, you have so much left to learn. And we leave at the end of the month. Do you think there'll be enough time?"</p>
<p>His right hand sneaks between her legs, but as soon as she expects the sweet bloom of pleasure his hand rises and pinches the skin of her ass.</p>
<p>Reina yelps and turns over, as much as she can under Jimmy's weight. He laughs out her name.</p>
<p>"You've broken the rule."</p>
<p>"You pinched me," she counters.</p>
<p>Jimmy rises from her and lies beside. "Did you have a good day?"</p>
<p>She transfers to her back and answers the ceiling with a nod.</p>
<p>"I'm glad. Now my turn, darling. The oil's on the nightstand."</p>
<p>Her hands feel magnetic with the promise of touching him all over and she pools a drop of the rose-smelling stuff onto her palm. Jimmy undresses in the candle-light, all shapes and shadows and contrasts. He lies on his stomach as she approaches. From what she can see, his eyes are shut and his mouth is open.</p>
<p>Reina nibbles the inside of her cheek before murmuring, "This is a lesson in control."</p>
<p>The bed dips with her weight and she scatters kisses across Jimmy's narrow back. Her oiled hands grip his arms and she messes the hair, savoring the distinct coarseness of it, taking him in. It's the first real time she's gotten to explore uninhibited. His skin is pale, but a light tan marks his forearms. His hips are thin, smaller than the spread of his shoulders, and taper into long legs that nearly hang off the end of the bed. This is so special. Her heart leaps. She wants to hide him away and keep him to herself.</p>
<p>The candle spreads light and shadow across Jimmy, and he begins to look like a piece of art. She'd like to lick the idea up like chocolate.</p>
<p>Reina bites on her lip, instead. Even though no sounds come from him, his words from before weigh on her thoughts. At the end of the month. And after that, then what?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Dressing the Part</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jimmy's heart pumps blood at a slow pace, heavy with rest just below his ribcage and cool skin. He's a good pillow, Reina deduces. So good. Her fingers splay across his flat sternum and sift between the strands of black chest hair. For the past fifteen minutes of consciousness, she's been touching him, thinking, breathing. Her dry lips crave the downed roundness of a peach and the sweet drip inside. A breath flurries into the pillow under her head.</p>
<p>In five minutes, the alarm clock Reina insisted on setting will go off and she'll have to step down to the village to start her day. She reaches over onto the nightstand and clicks the timer off. Her eyes retreat to view Jimmy. He's young in slumber.</p>
<p>With a careful spread of her leg, she slips from the bed and away from his warmth. She dresses without hurry in front of the tall mirror: slacks and a loose shirt, Jimmy's shirt, as tomorrow is laundry day and closed-toe flats. Behind her reflection, Jimmy turns and his back shines white and bent, bony. His hair splays against the pillow and a twinge of desire pricks her lip — desire for the mattress, duvet, Jimmy's cold feet kissing her legs, the loose breeze brushing tree branches across the window pane. She offers him a silent, blown kiss, and departs from the Manor.</p>
<p>The path down to the village isn't too far. The sights of the walk make up for the length, anyway. It's always what she imagined the countryside to look like with its lush grasses and heaving dips and rises. Everything is soggy summer wet; she could unravel in the mud.</p>
<p>"Elizabeth," Reina calls when she nears the stall. The old woman is already setting out the wooden bins of fruits and vegetables. Elizabeth is nearly eighty, a widow whose first husband died in World War I. She told Reina she couldn't stand living like a cooped hen and made her little market as a way to get out of the house.</p>
<p>She waves to Reina, offering her a case of raspberries to place in the front. "How is your James?"</p>
<p>"He's still sleeping this morning. Do you have any peaches that I could eat? I've been craving them lately."</p>
<p>"A whole basket right behind you, help yourself. You haven't told me yet, dear, what this James looks like."</p>
<p>The first morning drift of customers wavers by before Reina can answer, or lean down to wrap her hand around one of the round fruits. She doesn't usually like working with people, but a lot of the tourists and locals don't like to talk. They ask for whatever they need and they're gone.</p>
<p>"You really want to know?" Reina finally bites into the peach. It's a hydrating sweetness. The juice drips down her chin and she reaches a hand to wipe the mess away.</p>
<p>"Of course I do. Now, come on? Handsome?"</p>
<p>Reina laughs. She fills a customer's brown bag with a bunch of grapes and three stalks of celery. Most of the people buy their daily groceries here, returning the next day for the afternoon's ingredients. There's something substantial and comforting in their calm.</p>
<p>"Yes, very handsome. He's tall. Dark-haired. Thin. He looks like . . . like he doesn't belong to this century."</p>
<p>It's Elizabeth's turn to chuckle. She rubs an apple against her apron and takes a bite. "He's got you, then?"</p>
<p>"I suppose."</p>
<p>"Where did the two of you meet?"</p>
<p>Reina's hands rub against one another, but she presses smooth and smiles into the fib. "At one of my recitals. He was in the audience and came up to me backstage to ask me to dinner."</p>
<p>"Ah, a true English gentleman! He sounds delightful. But, what recital?"</p>
<p>"Oh, a ballet." Money moves swiftly from hand to hand, as quick as Reina can spew out the words. Somewhere wavering, she wishes she had met him as an artist. Intellectuals bound to one another. But the wish fumbles with the conversation and soon, Elizabeth is occupied with her customers.</p>
<hr/>
<p>The sky's a full, puffy grey at half past noon as Reina renters the stall and settles down. There's a deli a short walk from the village center and every day so far she's gotten one turkey sandwich for herself and ham for Elizabeth.</p>
<p>Her fingers work the paper and hunger twists in her stomach as a reminder. She enjoys this so much, this little life, here with rain clouds and old people. A smile echoes on her face.</p>
<p>Suddenly, she hears her name from behind the wooden stall and sees Elizabeth bustling around the corner.</p>
<p>"Someone is here asking for you." There's a smirk on the old woman's face.</p>
<p>Reina sets her sandwich down and wipes her hands on her slacks. The stone streets clack beneath the slight heels of her shoes, but the sound quiets when she turns to face a man in a suit. He's in profile, with a brimmed hat like an American gangster's and a tall, black cane. Just from his scent and his stance, she recognizes him. Her stomach somersaults. </p>
<p>"Jimmy?" She nearly laughs.</p>
<p>"It's good to see you, darling." He steps towards her, holding the cane up under his arm and bending forward. A breath of air escapes from between her lips; never has she seen anyone look so cool.</p>
<p>"What's all this about?"</p>
<p>Jimmy takes her hand, kisses it, and smiles. "I want to take you into the city."</p>
<p>"But my shift isn't over," she complains when he tugs at her. The elderly stare from across the market. </p>
<p>"I already spoke to your . . . employer. She'll give you unpaid leave." Jimmy brings her close, surrounding her in rich, tailored fabric and his voice. "Mmm, I see you steal." His right hand teases the button-up she wears. It hangs a little loose on her form.</p>
<p>"I don't have anything to wear. See, that's another problem." But she's so enthralled that she doesn't notice the progress they're making back to the manor. </p>
<p>"No worries on that. I have a gift waiting on the bed for you. Do you like the color red?"</p>
<p>Reina can't help it now. The two of them leave the village center and she slips her arm through the space of his bent elbow. "I prefer burgundy," she remarks. </p>
<p>"Even better." </p>
<p>He's seemingly joyful as they progress up the hill back to Plumpton, despite the rocky climb and sticky heat. Reina finds herself attracted to him even more so than before. Maybe she'll have to rewrite her perceptions about him being a sheepherder. </p>
<p>In the living room, she stops him with a hand on his chest. "But really, what is all this about?" By now, she's kicked off the shoes and undone her hair, allowing it to fall freely to her shoulders. </p>
<p>Jimmy smiles in that ambiguous way with the side of his mouth lifted slightly. "I want to show you off. And look around. There are only so many trees and rabbits I can take, love." </p>
<p>At the mention of her looks, Reina heats with flattery and turns to the bedroom. The dress catches her attention immediately: long, the color of spilled wine with a tie at the front and chiffon overlay. She takes it by the hanger and presses it to herself, modeling in the mirror. She feels like she's getting ready to go to her first prom. Jimmy appears behind her. </p>
<p>"Try it on," his voice says. His gaze is soft and drooped. </p>
<p>She doesn't hesitate to strip in front of him but excuses herself to the bathroom in order to apply a coat of perfume and wipe the sweat from her body. If she's going out, she needs her hair brushed as well, and pinned with a gold butterfly clip. Taking up the dress and putting it over her head is a journey in itself. The chiffon floats about her for a brief moment until it comes to rest against her hips and shoulders. She makes a bow of the big satin tie in the middle. Special, is the word that comes to her mind. She feels special and considered. With the way things are progressing between her and Jimmy, her smile reappears and stays. It's like she imagined. She takes a final look at herself and bites her lip before returning to the bedroom. </p>
<p>Jimmy sits on the end of the bed with a novel in his hand and the hat beside. Always reading, usually silent. Reina steps towards him, two hands on his knees to spread them apart and place herself between. He gives an upward glance and a raise of his brows. </p>
<p>"What do you think?" She asks. Her hand pushes the book from his grasp and she takes the opportunity to do a little twirl in front of him. </p>
<p>He runs his hand over her hip, collecting the fabric and pulling it, and her, against him. Her middle makes contact with his face and he nuzzles the silk, reaches up with a hooked finger to pull the two sides apart and place a kiss on her bare skin. Goosebumps rise and she shivers. "A vision," he finally says. "May I suggest no bra or knickers?"</p>
<p>But he's already reaching up underneath. His fingers dance across her thigh until they find the waistband of her underwear. </p>
<p>"Just think of it. You, walking around nude under all this fabric. And no one will know but you and me." </p>
<p>She gives a whispery sigh. Arousal slithers down and begs his hand to move. But he's right. In the manor, out in the world, there is nothing more than her and him. Reina rises a bit on her tiptoes, leaning towards Jimmy, asking for something good. </p>
<p>He stops her with his forearm against her stomach. "Patience and waiting. Controlling oneself. You need to learn how to be patient, Reina."</p>
<p>She wants to whine like a child. She's been patient all her life. Her eyes drag over his freshly-curled hair, shiny from the lamplight, soft, and she wraps her arms around his back. </p>
<p>A thought suddenly comes to her: "Yesterday, when we were here in the bedroom..."</p>
<p>Jimmy pulls the soft panties from her hips and they crumple and wash down her legs. His fingertips kiss below her navel. Her chest can't help but rise.</p>
<p>"Yesterday, when we were here in the bedroom?" Jimmy teases. He taps a gentle rhythm to her sensitive skin. </p>
<p>"Yeah, you were talking about how you've been too lenient with me." </p>
<p>"I was. And I have been. What do you think would serve as a just lesson for you?"</p>
<p>As soon as those words touch the air and his head makes a dip beneath her dress, the car honks outside. He pulls away and looks up. Reina flattens her heels into the carpet and swipes her bangs to address him wearily. </p>
<p>"I never leave things unfinished, darling," he gives a warning. "I'm thinking perhaps I'll teach you how to adjust to the unexpected." He rises to his feet, almost falls against her due to their closeness. </p>
<p>Reina licks her lips and kisses the dimple in his chin. Despite her furrowed brows, she nods. Jimmy steps around her and waits by the doorway while she fishes a pair of heels from under the bathroom counter. They're a shiny gold, the ones she wore the first time they met. A stray hair wisps down and brushes her cheek. She tucks it away and looks up at Jimmy. </p>
<p>"Remember Elvis was playing?"</p>
<p>He holds out his arm for her to grab. His other hand holds the cane. Reina wants to stop in the mirror to see what they look like. But Jimmy bypasses the sitting room for the doorway and asks: "When?" </p>
<p>"At the Rainbow. I was so captivated by you that night."</p>
<p>The driver waits for them with the backdoor open, sunlight glistening from the chrome trim. This is truly a luxury, Reina realizes. </p>
<p>"As I was by you," she hears Jimmy say. He lets her sit in the backseat first, climbing in next to her. She's overwhelmed by his words, busy staring at the leather beneath, when he breathes again in her ear, "Do you like art, Reina?"</p>
<p>She chuckles. He adjusts the flowy fabric falling down her shoulder. "Yes, of course I do," she tells him as the car starts and leaves the Manor.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Living in the Art World</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lucifer: the fallen angel, the dissenter, the traitor. Reina forces her eyes to stare at the pained expression on the statue. </p>
<p>Jimmy slips his hand behind her back, silky along the chiffon fabric. The cold air of the museum had washed up Reina's legs, reminding her of her lack of undergarments. Jimmy's hand plays and pulls and she blushes. He tilts his head forward. "See the attention to detail on the wings? Quite something, isn't it? Almost trying to mimic those Renaissance copies." </p>
<p>Within the bright walls of the exhibit, surrounded by creation, Jimmy is chatty and warm, flitting along to examine the pieces. He stares for a moment, maybe a moment more, then offers Reina his opinion of the work. She likes listening to him and spending his time, but by the final room, she's bored and hungry. </p>
<p>"So what do you think?" He turns from the statue to her. "It's the last, most recognizable form of this exhibit, wouldn't you agree? This beginning of an underworld, the connection of the body with something raw and flat."</p>
<p>She decides to answer. Something about their conversation recalls his talk of the Turkish, twirling Muslims from the Rainbow. "I think so. There's something hasty about it too. It doesn't have the same immaculate form as Bernini's."</p>
<p>Jimmy smiles at that and Reina feels something like accomplishment in her muscles. She relaxes and looks at him. He stares back in silence and brings his hand up to thumb her lip for a brief second. </p>
<p>"I'm surprised no one recognized you," she tells him. </p>
<p>"Do you wish they had?"</p>
<p>She shakes her head. "No, you know what I mean." They've spoken in quiet, hushed tones since entering the museum. It feels like sharing a secret world with him, divided from the others who straggle around. Out of all, Reina and Jimmy are the best dressed. She grabs his wrist. </p>
<p>He scans the forced grip with his eyes and then savors the look of her face. "Do you have to use the toilet before we leave?"</p>
<p>"No, not really." She allows his wrist to fall. </p>
<p>"No, Reina. Do you need to go into the restroom?" He narrows his glance and sweeps his palm down to her hip, pulling her forward. </p>
<p>She searches him and nods, taking in a gasp as he brings them together and they wander through the museum. His cane taps on the tiled floor, accompanied by the percussion of her platforms. Jimmy sweeps her into a little alcove, pushing open the single-occupant bathroom and flicking on the light. Like the rest of the building, the restroom is a bright white. Reina catches her look in the mirror and gazes at the wisps of hair, dark lipstick, dark dress. Her stomach presses into the vanity as she leans forward to examine her complexion. She questioned the width of her mouth when she was younger, or the rise of her cheeks: small, incoherent things. Her mother told her no boy would ever love her, as long as she walked through the world with a frown on her face. She shows her teeth to the mirror and sees Jimmy's reflection above her, to the right. </p>
<p>"Turn around, darling. Sit on the edge." He takes the hat from his head and stalks to her. </p>
<p>She does as he asks, feeling the countertop bite into her thighs with coolness and pressure. </p>
<p>Without breaking the stillness of his expression, Jimmy reaches her and places the hat atop her head. A giggle falls from her mouth and she readjusts, gathering the smell of his conditioner, opening her mouth and asking:</p>
<p>"A good look?"</p>
<p>Jimmy hums and begins to lower himself to his knees. "Everything is a good look on you. Clothed, unclothed, underneath me, dancing, sleeping, spent. Spread your legs for me." </p>
<p>Seeing him beneath her on a bathroom floor makes her head heavy with arousal. Only she gets to have this. She parts her thighs and scoots further to the edge of the counter until her shoes sit flat on the floor. </p>
<p>His hand touches at the back of her knee and her muscles flex immediately. "How was it walking around with no knickers?"</p>
<p>"I felt bad," she breathes and looks away. He brings her stretched leg forward, in contact with his lips. He marks a path along the plane of her shin, chides with his cheek against her. </p>
<p>"But how did it feel knowing it was all for me?"</p>
<p>Reina looks down at him and lets her hand fall to find his hair. "Exciting. To know we're here right now . . ." What she wants to say is she likes their private game, but she can't find the proper way to express it. </p>
<p>His lips pass over her knee and his head fills the space between her thighs, leaving nibbling marks on the curved, soft flesh. "I told you I don't leave things unfinished. Now, answer me and I'll give you what you want."</p>
<p>And all she wants is his mouth and his touch, red hot, where she needs them. "Alright," she moans. </p>
<p>"'For pure will, unassuaged of purpose . . . ?'"</p>
<p>She shakes her head in a desperate motion. "You never told me this one." </p>
<p>"I did," he counters. "Come on, darling, use your memory." He pulls away almost completely, his fore and middle fingers circling the sensitive inside of her thigh. </p>
<p>She tries to think back to their nights spent in bed, her in his lap with his assortment of books strewn over the mattress. "Um," her voice wobbles. "'Makes the result perfect?'"</p>
<p>His touch rises up her legs, closer to her center. "Almost. You're missing quite a few words." He dares to tease her, barely brushing her entrance, and she gives a whine in return.</p>
<p>"Please, Jimmy, enough." But there's something bitterly exciting about earning her pleasure.</p>
<p>A sudden jiggle of the bathroom door handle, followed by a knock, makes Reina's head rise and her eyes widen.</p>
<p>She clears her throat. "Occu —" The rest of the word fizzles from her mouth as Jimmy enters her with two fingers.</p>
<p>Her hips automatically buck forward at the sensation and her hand in his hair fists. He rises slightly to catch her bundle of nerves in his mouth. Reina squirms and stifles her moans between bit lips. Jimmy wants to do this, she realizes, Jimmy wants her.</p>
<p>Her legs part further and she brings them to rest over his shoulders. He's buried in the red fabric of her dress, swimming in it, curling his fingers and tracing circles with his tongue. Reina could explode.</p>
<p>She shuts her eyes and leans into the feeling. Like snapshots, she sees the colorful paintings of earlier, the oil texture mountaining from the canvas.</p>
<p>"'Lust,'" she breathes hot, '"lust' was in there somewhere."</p>
<p>Jimmy hums with his lips wrapped around her; her echoing moan accompanies the sound. Reina's heels dig into his back. She's at his will in the museum bathroom and her fingers are caught in his hair. For the first time, she lets herself go, completely. All she knows is his mouth, his fingers, the softness of his hair, the gentle scrape of his expensive dress jacket on her ankles. He is a mix of textures, on his knees for her, and she is busy feeling.</p>
<p>He replaces his fingers with his tongue and she lets go of his hair to curve her back, using the sink for leverage. If she opened her eyes and looked down, she'd see him glancing up at her with eyes focused on the backward curve of her neck. His hands latch to her thighs; it's good to be held. She remembers suddenly.</p>
<p>Her voice is trapped beneath layers of shifting, whining sounds. She can only think in syllables. "I figured it out, Jimmy."</p>
<p>He doesn't remove himself from between her legs. She's gotten comfortable to the swish of his curls on her inner thighs.</p>
<p>"It's '. . . delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.'"</p>
<p>More than anything, Reina knows, Jimmy has a craving for outcome. And as the pleasure tightens and bundles — a sparkler about to be lit — she can guess this is all to see her orgasm. To see the heady weight of her body afterward, lax and sloped, atop the vanity.</p>
<p>Her brows furrow and her mouth opens whole again. She calls out to him as if he's far away, and the moment of sensation is suddenly ignited gunpowder: a bursting, steaming firework against a dark night sky. Whines unfolding into a song of cries. She twitches and moves and he licks what she's made until her breath quiets and he pulls away.</p>
<p>Those green eyes are staring intently at her. His chin and mouth are shiny wet. Jimmy's posture unfolds as he stands and he steps to her, lifting her slightly so that she stands upright on the ground.</p>
<p>And he hugs her. The intimacy of it surprises her: the warmth of his arms and the press of his chest.</p>
<p>"Hell, Reina. Imagine if you had come in front of everyone out there. It would have been true art."</p>
<p>She laughs full of breath. The suggestion is far too dirty for her. He relinquishes her from his arms and takes his hat back, adjusting the folds of her dress as he praises.</p>
<p>"And you remembered the lines," a pet to her bangs, pulling them back into place. "You just needed a little coaxing; I know how you like to be taken care of." He cradles her face for a moment with his unsoiled palm, then turns away to wash his hands in the bathroom sink.</p>
<p>It's like a dream to Reina almost. Again, she sees herself in the mirror, a freshly-fucked girl with flushed cheeks and wide eyes. She moves away to the door and stands with her arms crossed over her chest. "Thank you," she says as he approaches. The light catches against droplets of spilled water on his jacket. "That was . . . no one's ever . . ."</p>
<p>She shuts her mouth; she feels a little inadequate again. But Jimmy links his arm with hers and gives a sideways glance of his eyes. As she's opening the door, he whispers, "And I've never tasted anything so good as what's between your legs."</p>
<p>Reina stares at the white ground with a flaming blush on her cheeks. Excitement weaves again into her system — she can't believe what he does to her.</p>
<hr/>
<p>She's full when they return to the Manor, sated from food, sated from pleasure, but somehow she can't stand to leave Jimmy. When he disappears outside to the lake, she follows.</p>
<p>He stands in the dusk, throwing bread bits to the swans. Unlike her, he seems to attract them. Reina walks down to his side, her bare feet cool in the grass. He gives her a handful of bread pieces without turning his head or speaking.</p>
<p>Reina used to feed the stray cats that surrounded the house when she was little, fatten them until her mom drove them away each time. But this is nothing like that.</p>
<p>"There's a myth about swans," she hears Jimmy say suddenly. She turns to look at him. His hat and cane are gone and his undershirt is open at his chest. He looks different in this pre-night time. "That the last sound they make before they die is the most beautiful."</p>
<p>"Swan song."</p>
<p>He receives her expression and nods. "I think it's a sentiment for the end of things. As if it all is just for that last moment." He pauses and from the angle she views, the sun is setting behind him, orange between the trees. "I've told you before, but you're something special, Reina. Don't forget that."</p>
<p>The clarity is overwhelming. She has to turn her head before she begins to cry in front of him. When she wipes beneath her cheeks and glances back, he's watching her.</p>
<p>"I like the way I feel when I'm with you." She tries her best to make eye contact, but his intensity is searing, heavy. Her insecurity from last week is gone. Now, she doesn't want to leave Plumpton. She tosses the final bit of bread into the lake.</p>
<p>Jimmy pulls her against him by the hands and gives her a kiss. It's light, chaste almost, and youthful. Separation stings her. Her hair and dress sway in the wind.</p>
<p>"Look," she points behind him. They both find the sky to watch the sunset. She speaks quietly to him, "You're right about the ends of things. They're so beautiful."</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Sitting Near the Water</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jimmy lowers his hand to Reina's mouth, cherry stem between his fingers, and lets her take the bright fruit.</p>
<p>She's on her stomach with her forearms propping her up from the thin rug. The sun skips across the lake and dapples on her bare legs after filtering from the tall grasses. It's warm enough to wear a playsuit: cotton and floral.</p>
<p>Pulling on the cherry, she breaks the soft flesh with her teeth and leaves the stem poised between Jimmy's knuckles. Cherries are her favorite fruit. They're sundae fruits, the summer of 1964 fruits.</p>
<p>"Can you tie cherry knots?" Reina asks. Jimmy sits next to her, holding one leg close to him, the other bent behind. It's a relaxed, feminine pose paired with jeans and the pastel shirt she recognizes from last week. She takes the stem from his hand and places it in her mouth.</p>
<p>"No," he tells her and shakes his head. His hair is soft and his eyes are hidden from her view by sunglasses. The light bounces from the lenses. It settles and shines against the pendant he wears around his neck, peeking from the unopened fourth button of his shirt. </p>
<p>Reina works her tongue, twisting the stem and catching the end on her teeth to pull the knot taut. She speaks with a preoccupied mouth, "I used to be really good at it." </p>
<p>A hum leaves her and what follows is the tied red stem, spit into the middle of her palm. She holds it up for Jimmy to see.</p>
<p>"Nicely done," he chuckles. His voice is deeper than usual, still sleep-toned. It makes him sound a little older. He reaches down and feeds her another cherry before taking up the hurdy-gurdy and setting it in his lap.</p>
<p>Reina loves this: doing nothing but listening to the weeping sounds Jimmy produces and ripping pieces of grass from the dirt with her toes.</p>
<p>A voice echoes above the hurdy-gurdy's song, "Mr. Page?"</p>
<p>Reina turns her head and Jimmy mimics her motion. They look out into the forest and see two men walking down the path, one carrying a movie camera. Jimmy stands. </p>
<p>Reina rises from the rug with him and watches the three men come closer to one another. </p>
<p>"Joe," Jimmy's voice says. "It's good to see you."</p>
<p>"You haven't forgotten, have you? I knocked at the door, but no one answered." Joe is American, with dark hair, and looks at least ten years older than Jimmy. His companion sets the large camera at his hip for a moment and surveys the scene, making eye contact with Reina. </p>
<p>"No, of course not. Actually, I have an idea, if you'll play along with it." </p>
<p>Joe gestures to the cameraman and he hustles forward, producing a notepad and pen. Reina stares. They're completely involved in Jimmy's direction as he begins to dictate a scene. </p>
<p>"So, perhaps you're coming through the forest here," he points behind Joe. "And I am sitting, playing. The audience hears the sound before they see me. And when you finally reach the water edge, I'll turn and face the camera. It's meant to be the tour announcement, correct?"</p>
<p>"That's what Peter has in mind." </p>
<p>Reina picks the bowl of cherries from the blanket and stands to the side as the men begin to walk towards her. Their feet leave the grass crumpled behind them. </p>
<p>"Right," Jimmy says. "Do you have some coloring effect you could apply to the film?" </p>
<p>"It depends on what you're asking for." Before Joe continues, his squinting eyes find Reina's. He smiles at her and holds out his hand. "How are you, dear?" </p>
<p>Her chest rises at the action of being noticed. She unweaves her grip on the cherry bowl and gives him a handshake. His face is unremarkable, but she holds back her judgment, offering a smile in return. "I'm fine, how are you?"</p>
<p>"Good, thanks." He brings his attention back to Jimmy and tension anchors the brief silence. The birds chirp from the trees above and the fallen leaves rustle across the grass. Joe finally speaks again, "Let's get started."</p>
<p>Reina gathers herself and straightens, walking past Jimmy and planting a kiss on his cheek. "I'm going inside," she tells him.</p>
<p>"You don't want to stay and watch?" His hand wavers on her arm and drops when she shakes her head.</p>
<p>She readjusts her bangs. "Good luck." Without turning to say goodbye to the director or the cameraman, she follows the path back to the Manor, stepping over the grassy land-bridge and finding her sandals waiting for her at the back door. She picks them up and enters. </p>
<p>The Manor always carries the scent of age: dust and books. It's a rewarding smell, despite Reina's sour mood. She sets the bowl in the kitchen and grabs the broom and dustpan. She's prone to cleaning, to keep her mind off things.</p>
<p>Her sweeping carries her into the living room, where she fishes for sugar packets on the coffee table and sets Buddy Guy on the record player.</p>
<p>His twinging, sultry playing makes Reina put her hands in the air, losing the grip on the broom. It thuds soft to the carpet. It's the first time she's had the Manor all to herself and she takes the opportunity to swing her hips, lean her head back to the ceiling. Her mind throbs with worry.</p>
<p>The director is just a reminder of Jimmy's obligation. His real obligation, outside of her, the swans, the rolls of tape in the studio. At the end of this month, he'll have to go back to the States.</p>
<p>
  <em>¿Y dónde estarás, Reina?</em>
</p>
<p>It was a question her mother loved to ask. When Reina complained of not being able to go to the park with friends, her mother would give that look: and where will you be? Smoking their stuff? Coming home drunk? Giving up on your school and your dance and ruining your body?</p>
<p>Reina could sing the blues, too, if she tried. But instead, she wipes the counter down and dusts the curtains and flails. It's been a long afternoon already, even longer with the weight of insecurity in her stomach. The songs pass and leak into one another. Sweat begins to dot across Reina's forehead.</p>
<p>Soon, Side A of the record winds down and she collapses across the sofa. She drapes her feet, hot from motion, over the arm and turns her head to the carpet.</p>
<p>The back door sweeps open and shuts. Reina allows her eyes to droop slightly. Jimmy's footsteps pat across the tile and grow muffled when he reaches the carpet and sighs into one of the armchairs. </p>
<p>"Joe Massot's gone," he tells her. </p>
<p>"I know," she responds, and it's a little like a whine. The fabric of Jimmy's shirt scrapes the upholstery of the chair as he rises and nears her, placing a hand on her shoulder.</p>
<p>"Are you jealous, darling?" He asks. "No need to be jealous. I'm all yours now."</p>
<p>She huffs and her knuckles brush the carpet when she turns over onto her back. "I can share you just fine." It's good to see his face again, without sunglasses, and pale and pink in the daylight. It holds an incredulous stare with scrunched nose and raised brows. She ignores it. "Never cut your hair," she tells him.</p>
<p>Jimmy laughs and pulls at the hem of her short playsuit; his eyes rise with mirth. Reina skates her hand along the back of his. </p>
<p>He almost foils to her, his knees bending as he makes the move to the couch, but he stands just as quickly. A smirk lifts his face with the help of the streaming sunlight. It makes her desperately gather the feeling of going to the beach with him. His voice comes quick and quiet:</p>
<p>"Come on now. Help me bring the rug inside." </p>
<hr/>
<p>The month draws out in languor. Their days are mostly the same, attending to the business of the morning and finding each other in the late afternoons. He'll bathe and she'll read or the roles will reverse and she'll listen to him with eyes closed. Or they'll make love and he'll find another way to make her crumble. And the daily mysticism lessons continue until she's finding connections in her routines. Each day becomes another to memorize his sound, his smell, the shape and form of his body. And to catch his person. </p>
<p>"Patrick. I love that," she spews one late evening. It's the usual setup: his frame shrouds hers in the bathtub and a dark incense burns on the vanity countertop. June has already turned to July. His long legs stick from the water and she sets her hands atop his knees, turning frequently to give him kisses on the forearm in the lulls of their conversation. </p>
<p>"Now, tell me yours." </p>
<p>A stretch of excitement enters her: he wants to know as much of her as she wants of him. "Paz," she breathes. The steam slithers up from the tub. It's intoxicating by itself. "It means peace. It was my father's idea, apparently, for me to even have a middle name. He wanted it for my sister, but Mamá insisted she would be Paloma." </p>
<p>"You never talk much about him." He's been so open with her. Each day, she learns more about him. Today is the day of names. </p>
<p>"I know. He left me. I really don't know anything about him."</p>
<p>Jimmy picks her hair from her wet back. "Do you want to find him?" He asks. She swallows at the touch and the question. </p>
<p>"No. Obviously, he didn't want much to do with me." </p>
<p>He stiffens behind her suddenly, breath caught in his ribcage. She pretends not to notice and continues to talk.</p>
<p>"I don't want to go back to America."</p>
<p>He calms and resettles into the water. "I could tell." Slow fatigue begins to creep across the scene. "But it'll be good to play again, for more than just you."</p>
<p>She sees him with his shining suit and dark hair in his face. With the bow, he never appears to be part of this planet. "I like to watch you play, but still, there's something simple here."</p>
<p>The curtains are drawn and the only light is from the illumination of the candle; this is her favorite way to have the Manor. After a moment of silence, she wonders if he'll ever speak again. </p>
<p>"You're coming with me," he says suddenly. </p>
<p>For the first time in their banter, she turns back and looks at him. "Where?"</p>
<p>"On the tour." His shadow of a beard has returned and his hair hangs in heavy clumps against his shoulders. In opposition to her resistance, he had her trim the ends. Water droplets decorate him and slip down his chest and bare shoulders. Behind Reina, he's like a painting. She puts her hand on him and nods. </p>
<p>"Good. I wanted to go with you. I was a little afraid to ask." </p>
<p>He addresses her with shining eyes and a hinting smile. She knows this playful look. He often turns to it in public when she says something he likes. His grip rises from the water and wraps around her forearm. But for once, when he speaks, his voice seems unsure: "I was worried you wouldn't want to join me." </p>
<p>It makes her feel like she's a schoolgirl again, given a rhyming love poem as a declaration of love. She drops her head to stare at the water, cloudy from soap. He is vulnerable with her. She has to take it while he gives. </p>
<p>Her eyes rise and she leans to him, kissing his chin, where a shadow buries itself in the dimple beneath his pink mouth. "What's the first stop?" She asks when her lips leave. </p>
<p>"Chicago. Have you ever been?"</p>
<p>"No." And when they kiss each other, she has to hold her breath. Reina's afraid she'll wake up and the last month and weeks and days will have all been a long dream. She grabs Jimmy's shoulder, for the soft wet of his skin, and brings her second hand up to his hair. And maybe, if she holds him tight enough, he won't leave.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Coming Back to America</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"We're leaving," Jimmy calls from the doorway of the Manor. Outside, the car is waiting for them, already packed with their luggage. Reina feels languid and bitter. She takes her time stepping to the door and locking it.</p>
<p>This morning, Jimmy made her wake early. She hurried to get ready, combing her wet hair in the bathroom as Jimmy paced. Now she stands outside the door, framed by dark ivy vines. Her eyes glaze over Jimmy's image propped by the car. He wears a hard face, showing his age, and waves his hand to urge her forward.</p>
<p>"Wait a moment," she tells him. "I want to see the pond one last time."</p>
<p>She ignores his groan to step through the grass. She's questioning his hurry and blaming it on Peter Grant or the film or the painful need to get back to performing.</p>
<p>The day is cloudy and the sun fails to reach and glisten over the water. It makes Reina want to sigh. Instead, she reaches the edges and plays with the tall grasses. Their gentle tops brush along her palms in a feeling like little kisses.</p>
<p>The swans swim far from her, dark figures with a dark backdrop. She wishes it was nighttime. She turns her head away and finds Jimmy's figure at the start of the path. He stands with his hands on his hips; he doesn't seem like himself today.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Reina sleeps on the two-hour car ride to the airport. She manages to the gate and sleeps again on the plane. When she wakes for the second time, she is back in America, and Jimmy is telling her to get up.</p>
<p>"Why are you so tired?" He asks. He is rising from the seat in first class, turned to look at her as she stretches and groans.</p>
<p>"You woke me early." Her voice is creaky with exhaustion. She takes the hand he offers to help her up.</p>
<p>"Come on, let's hurry. I'll buy you a coffee at one of the cafes here."</p>
<p>She remembers when she first discovered him, this young guitarist looking to start a new band - raven-haired and mopey with sad eyes and skinny wrists. He walks in front of her now, a little heavier, with shorter hair, and a new, refined walk. Reina almost trips to get close to him and grab his hand.</p>
<p>"Okay," she says, and agrees on the coffee. They travel out of the terminal and into the airport, two people among a thousand. Wherever Reina looks she sees travelers with luggage behind them: businessmen, children with mothers, pilots and stewardesses. Only the rich can fly, her sister told her once.</p>
<p>"Ah, James," a coppery voice says. Peter Grant sits in one of the seats at a cafe, his body spilling over the sides and his legs stretched out across the patterned carpet.</p>
<p>"G, when'd you get here?" Jimmy leaves Reina standing in the middle of the huge walkway as people step and huff around her.</p>
<p>"A few hours before you." Peter checks his watch and peers up to notice Reina. She makes her way to them and smiles gingerly. The manager looks the same with light brown sideburns and a tuft of hair coming from the top of his head. Jimmy had gossiped and said G regularly roughed up concert promoters.</p>
<p>Reina sweeps next to Jimmy and whispers for his wallet. "For my coffee," she drags.</p>
<p>Jimmy retrieves it from his pants' pocket and offers it. "How was your time off?"</p>
<p>As she wanders to order, she hears Peter's response: "The wife and kids are well. We had a good time. How was it with that little bird?" He snickers and lights a cigarette.</p>
<p>Her skin tingles. She places her order and is desperate to find out what Jimmy has to say. His voice comes muffled, soft, blurred.</p>
<p>"She's sweet. A good girl."</p>
<p>Peter laughs loudly as Reina receives her coffee from the cashier and returns. Jimmy takes a lit stick and puffs on it, watching Reina when she sits beside Peter and blows on the hot liquid. His eyes don't give her much. In fact, the two men have moved on to other conversation.</p>
<p>"Where are the rest of them?" Jimmy imposes a commanding presence as he leans against a chair's back and sweeps his hair from his face.</p>
<p>Peter rises with a heave. "Jonesy's already waiting at the hotel, while Percy and Bonzo are about town. You're the last one as always, James." He puts a hand on Jimmy's shoulder. "I've got a car waiting outside for us."</p>
<p>They speak for a moment longer, bodies touching and voices whispery. The two seem to know each other the best out of the band. Jimmy is easy and friendly around G — boyish —and the attitude Jimmy warned Reina about has yet to appear from Peter.</p>
<p>"Get up," Jimmy gestures to her. "We're going to the hotel."</p>
<p>The last dregs of coffee spill into her mouth and she sets the mug back onto the order counter, hurrying to fill in beside the men. Their voices bounce back and forth.</p>
<p>"Your luggage should already be in your room, James. When you get there, make sure to tell me if they fucked something up."</p>
<p>"Sure. And, G, I thought you should know, my finger's healed nicely."</p>
<p>"Good. Means you'll be in top shape for the Garden."</p>
<p>Reina's shoulder rubs against Jimmy's arm. She cranes her head to view him; he smiles down at her and slings an arm around her waist.</p>
<hr/>
<p>The hotel is grand with a brightly-lit lobby whose sheen echoes out into the night sky. Several cars line the streets outside and make it difficult for Peter to parallel park.</p>
<p>"Welcome to motherfuckin' Chicago," he finally groans. He rolls the windows up, shuts the ignition off, and gets out, slamming his door behind him.</p>
<p>Jimmy follows from the front passenger seat and Reina steps out onto the sidewalk. The city stretches before her, cool and slick. Two young women with afros and hot pants pass her on the street, eyeing the car, the hotel, Jimmy standing idly. Reina feels a tugging urge to follow them. There's a stench she couldn't find in LA, a rawness unlike the post-Jim Morrison palm tree streets, and she toddles on her heels.</p>
<p>Her body is suddenly off the ground, held and lifted by two large arms. She shouts, loud, and struggles, but she knows these arms and the laugh they belong to and the symphonic sound of Jimmy's giggle underneath it all.</p>
<p>"Jesus, Bonzo," she yells into the night air. His body against hers is warm and already smells of alcohol. He places her back down onto the pavement. The first thing she can do when she faces him is smile. "How are you?"</p>
<p>His face rises. It's only been a month but she's forgotten his scent and the softness of his voice.</p>
<p>"Fantastic," he tells her. He's drunk and confident and twitchy from it. She leans forward and places a kiss on his cheek. His face is now beardless and sports only a mustache; she can finally admire the sharpness of his jaw.</p>
<p>Another voice joins the reunion and it doesn't take her long to find its owner. Robert looks exactly the same, leaning his weight on one hip and staring at the group forming by the car. Snakeskin boots and a tight t-shirt - Reina's never lacked the knowledge as to why young girls are so attracted to him.</p>
<p>She watches as he lingers with Jimmy, his touch light on him, and then he catches Reina's gaze and moves to her.</p>
<p>"Long time since I've seen you," Robert remarks. He uses a ringed hand to push his curls from his cheeks.</p>
<p>She swallows and briefly says, "Yeah." Despite holding her in the pool that one night, Robert didn't extend his kindness fully to her. She shies from him. Perhaps he feels threatened by her existence.</p>
<p>He gives her a look that says he's done and leads the party into the hotel. Reina sets her pace in time with Bonzo's.</p>
<p>"You have children, don't you?" Reina asks him.</p>
<p>He nods. "A little boy, Jason. He loves the band."</p>
<p>"Does he drum too?"</p>
<p>"Even better than me."</p>
<p>The five of them squeeze into the elevator, Reina, the smallest, presses into the back corner.</p>
<p>As soon as the doors open, she's bombarded with hollers and music and the sticky smell of cocktails. A few people sit in the hall on chairs or on each other, smoking joints. Reina's the last to exit.</p>
<p>"The rooms," Peter says, and hands Jimmy a piece of paper and two room keys. Reina looks over Jimmy's arm to see he's staying in 824 and 825. Peter continues, "There's a party goin' on. Just . . . don't fuck shit up."</p>
<p>With his last words, he leaves, lumbering down the hall. From his pocket, he pulls a key and a bag filled with white powder. Reina turns away to look at Jimmy and assess his mood.</p>
<p>"I need a drink," he says.</p>
<p>"On we go, Pagey, they've got your favorite stocked in one of these rooms. Peek your head in, see if you can find it." Robert saunters ahead, walks for a moment, then gives a delighted hum. He beckons them into one of the open rooms.</p>
<p>Inside, Reina finds most of the roadies and most of the girls from the last leg of the tour. Some are drinking and eating, paper plates in their hands while they dance to the rock n roll coming from the radio. It must be one of the crew's suites, small with a single bed and an adjacent bathroom. Still, somehow, the group managed to fit in there. A case of Jack Daniel's has its own seat. Robert pulls one up by the neck for Jimmy.</p>
<p>As the boys reunite and pass the bottle back and forth, Reina looks for a redhead with blue eyeshadow. But none of these girls are Georgina. A few are new, very young, and pretty with doe eyes and skinny legs they haven't learned to use yet. The sight unsettles Reina as one moves from the wall and slips to the bed, straight for Robert. She begins to feel nauseous.</p>
<p>Reina stops the blonde girl who was first with Bonzo on his birthday. She's forgotten her name by now. "Hey, have you seen Georgina?"</p>
<p>She shakes her head and her cherry lips move. "Gone. She's on the Stones tour now, that lucky bitch."</p>
<p>Reina forces a laugh and straightens her black blouse with a hand. All she really wants right now is a hot bath.</p>
<p>"Do you mind if I . . .?" She gestures to the roll on the girl's plate.</p>
<p>"Sure, take it."</p>
<p>Reina grabs it like a thief and stuffs her mouth. The bread is soft and sweet and brings the rumbling of her stomach to a quiet, slightly dimming the wiggly feeling that plagues her.</p>
<p>When she turns to ask Jimmy for the key and leave the room behind, he's preoccupied with a teenage girl, her hair pushed back in waves and her body primped in a skimpy outfit.</p>
<p>"Jim," Reina breathes softly, moving towards them and around the girl as she stutters out a question. His green eyes, slightly glazed now, find Reina's. <br/>"Can I have the key? I think I want to lie down some."</p>
<p>Jimmy doesn't move. The teenage girl stretches a protective arm over his midsection. "Why don't you stay and enjoy the night?"</p>
<p>"I don't feel well."</p>
<p>"They've got music playing. Dance a little for me." If they were in Plumpton, she would have loved seeing him like this: long body over the bed, hair curly and dark against the pillows. She stands and waits until he sighs, yields the key to her.</p>
<p>"I'll see you soon," she tries. He nods and swings his attention back to the girl at his side. Reina leaves the suite.</p>
<p>Walking down the hall is almost like walking through a minefield. She moves around laughing bodies and sleeping arms and running girls being chased by other girls being chased by men. She finally stands in front of Jimmy's door and unlocks it. She has barely any time to admire the interior or take note of the fact that her luggage is sitting unharmed in the living room because she's running to the bathroom.</p>
<p>Slamming the toilet seat up, she empties her stomach with a shaky heave: almost all bile from not having eaten. Reina wipes herself clean and flushes the toilet. She stands hunched in the dark bathroom. She is sweating and unnerved. When she reaches up to pull her hair into a ponytail, the strands are wet with saliva.</p>
<p>By the time she recognizes her singularity, she is steeping in the bath, body limp and feet propped against the porcelain. Reina looks across the bathroom into the mirror and sees her face in the little light that spreads from the sitting room. She knows this woman looking back at her, as she knew her in LA and London, but she doesn't know her purpose or intention.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Spending the Night</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Reina's eyes shut. She's dragged her suitcase to the bedroom and fished out her nightgown, slipping it over her head. She's brushed her teeth, dried her hair, and now lies on her side in the bed. It's comfortable, recently washed, but her arm reaches out to touch the cold other half. The empty sheet seems harsh. She tries to turn her imagination from Jimmy and gathers her limbs to her chest.</p>
<p>Through the open window, she listens to shouts and humming car engines, and uses them for white noise. There's a whole world she could be experiencing, but something like fear weighs her down. Reina curls herself and tries to relax the skin between her brows.</p>
<p>It's the incessant knocking that rouses her. She was just beginning to dream of a mountain and a light at the top of it; she had just started her climb.</p>
<p>"Wait a moment," she shouts, then yanks at the sheets to get herself out of bed. She pads through the suite, silently promising she'll get a better look at it tomorrow. Without looking through the peephole, she unlocks the door and opens it.</p>
<p>Richard Cole stands in front of Reina with his hands pushed down in the pockets of his jeans. "Good to see you, sweet thing," he says. His t-shirt has wet splotches on it and his fly is down.</p>
<p>Reina finds his face. She nods to him and rubs a thumb across her dry lips. Behind Richard, she can hear dull giggles from the hall. A bump from somewhere close causes her to step closer in the doorway.</p>
<p>"Sorry for waking you," his eyes make a brief search of her body in the nearly-sheer gown, "but I've got a special delivery."</p>
<p>Her arms cross her chest and she holds the heavy door open with her bare heel. "What is it?"</p>
<p>"James, you've been summoned."</p>
<p>Jimmy comes into the view of the doorway, long and gangly, tripping over himself and holding Tennessee whiskey in his fist. "Fuck, Cole, you coulda jus told me. . ." his voice fades in a slur when his eyes rise from beneath his hair and he notices Reina.</p>
<p>"Good luck," Richard says and pushes Jimmy inside the hotel room. He falls to the carpet from the shove and lies face-down. His whiskey drops and spills across the cream-toned floor and begins to seep into the padding beneath.</p>
<p>Reina lets the door bang shut and rushes to the kitchen. "Shit," she mutters under her breath, grabbing panel after panel of paper towels and wetting them with water and dish soap.</p>
<p>"Goddamn, I've spilled it," Jimmy's voice slips from the other room. As she hurries back, Reina kneels and smacks his hand away when he tries to reach for the bottle, a bit of liquid still swishing inside of it.</p>
<p>The deep smell wafts in the room and refuses to leave as she soaks the alcohol up. Jimmy watches. He's fallen on his side and rests with his hand under his head. His hair is damp and messy. The pink, small mouth is a harsh red, and the flushed color carries down his neck to his open chest, where a litter of lipstick marks sits hot and multi-shaded. Reina frowns at him. She's working to scrub the looped rug clean, her breasts moving with the tension of her arm.</p>
<p>"Mmm, you look good like that," Jimmy tells her. His voice is deeper than usual. It carries the same pitch as when he just wakes up. "With your tits like that. Lemme touch you."</p>
<p>He reaches for her, rises from his stilled position, but Reina stands and dumps the sullied napkins in the wastebasket hidden in a cabinet drawer.</p>
<p>"Oh, come on," he whines in response. "I missed you, sunshine. I wish you'd been there. We were having lots and lots of fun. Jolly, clean fun." He loses himself in a song of giggles.</p>
<p>Reina returns and stands above him as he touches his face and sweeps his hair away. His final bouts of laughter end in a sigh and he looks to her. It's strange to be over him, staring down at a man who holds himself so high. Sudden thoughts capture her, to have him, but she wipes them off quickly.</p>
<p>"Come to bed," she says. A command, not a suggestion. Her fever brims at Jimmy's immediate rise from the floor, wobbling, like a colt standing after birth. He totters and she grips his arm to force him to the bedroom. His feet drag, his weight surprisingly heavy despite the slender form, and he smells amber with alcohol. Reina leads him and his voice lowers to her ear, hot, as they pass the threshold:</p>
<p>"I missed you."</p>
<p>A feeling in her stomach grows heavy. Still, she helps him find the bed and murmurs, "you already told me."</p>
<p>Jimmy crawls onto the mattress and paws at the sheets until he's able to get under them. The sight aches like sore muscles.</p>
<p>Reina steps around to the other side of the bed and prevents him from pulling the sheets fully around himself.</p>
<p>"Let me undress you first," she says. His cherubic face stares at her. His curls are frizzed and messy and the first thing she does is comb them from his cheeks with her fingers.</p>
<p>Paloma used to apply Vicks VapoRub to Reina's chest when she was ill. And the smell and the heat would swarm around her. That menthol, medicine scent sitting like a cloud in the room. Paloma would sing too: <em>Y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mí.</em></p>
<p>After her sister finished, Reina would beg for another, usually "Piel Canela," just to hear the chorus of <em>me importas tú y tú y tú y solamente tú...</em></p>
<p>Jimmy's hair spreads the white pillows with dark strands and Reina begins to shed his jacket, hoisting up his limp arms, asking him to sit up. He's surprisingly gentle for a drunk and only makes noise when her fingers tickle the sides of his torso.</p>
<p>After she bares his upper body she moves to his pants and unbuttons them at the waist. She's memorized this frame in the time they've been together and smiles when she sees the sweet rise of his stomach. Her eyes shoot up and find his trained on her with the same wide-eyed stare of a trapped animal. This must be unusual for him, she thinks, to be taken care of. She supplies a press of her lips above his navel and works the satin trousers down, stopping to slip his shoes and his socks from his feet underneath the covers. His toes stretch with the soft blanket touch.</p>
<p>"You're so quiet, I'd think you were asleep," she says.</p>
<p>"'m thinking." His response is swallowed with the whiskey still present on his breath. She piles his discarded outfit on the floor and climbs over him to settle into his side. "Of all sorts of things," he goes on. "The first time I fell in love was in a meadow. And she kissed me in a pile of wildflowers and peeled my clothes and loved me until I was weeping. You know I was a nervous child," he looks direct at Reina, makes a grimace.</p>
<p>She's too caught in a gelatinous jealousy to think much about his expression. Her arm rests on her hip. She brings it up to wet her fingers and wipe at the lipstick marks with saliva. Jimmy doesn't move.</p>
<p>"And I was scared of most people except her because she was beautiful and had eyes like a still, cloudless sky. Her smile was full. Her hair was blonde and when I touched it," he squeezes a handful of Reina's tresses. She regrets not pulling away fast enough, "it was what I imagined spun gold to feel like."</p>
<p>They look at each other. Jimmy wears a sleepy smile. Reina sets her jaw and steals from the bed. She doesn't hear a protest when she leaves the room and takes the key for the companion suite.</p>
<p>He doesn't call her back, doesn't wobble from the bed and see what's taking her so long. A rope of guilt pulls at her ankles. A swell of shame follows. She pads to the door and thinks for a moment. Foolish, she tells herself and slips out into the hallway. Most of the partiers are gone, although a few still remain; she doesn't recognize any of them and ignores their whistles of approval at her nightgown. She unlocks the door to the second suite and finds the wall switch for the light.</p>
<p>This one is even more extravagant than the first. Everything is rich with jewel tones: wallpaper and curtains and furniture. But it's smaller as well, only containing a sunk-in sitting area and a bedroom with a bath. She turns to the only other door in the suite and finds a round bed with silken sheets. She imagines this is where Jimmy would want her, trying to get back what they'd done on the fur in the Starship.</p>
<p>A yawn claims her breath and irritation makes her tired. She hikes up the silken sheets and lies under, her back mellowing against the fabric, her body slipping.</p>
<p>Although her thoughts are high, she's able to shut her eyes and drift after the long day and early rise. She attempts to forget there will be a tomorrow.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Jimmy is wearing sunglasses when she sees him again, downstairs at breakfast. The band, Peter, Richard, girls, and men she hasn't attached names to yet sit in the dining hall of the hotel. Waiters are bringing plates of food to the table when Reina arrives. The men tell her good morning, as do some of the girls, and she stares at the full seats.</p>
<p>"Here," Richard says. "I'll get a chair for you."</p>
<p>She watches with silent eyes as he tells the girl beside Jimmy to scoot over and places the fabric-backed dining chair between them.</p>
<p>Reina nods to him, "Thanks." She messes with her silverware for a moment until a server asks for her order. "An omelet and an orange juice," she responds. They're her childhood favorites.</p>
<p>"Sleep well?" Jimmy's foot brushes hers under the table. His tone is laced.</p>
<p>She glances down, not at their feet, but at his plate, barely touched, his hand clenching the fork.</p>
<p>A shiver travels her spine. "Fine. What about you?"</p>
<p>"Horrible," he responds. He sips his mug of tea and faces her.</p>
<p>Reina looks and sees his hickeys have darkened purple. He's tried to hide them under a scarf. His lips look pale and chapped and his clothes disheveled, thrown on. Still, she doesn't find him ugly.</p>
<p>"But last night was good, wasn't it?" She asks.</p>
<p>He grunts and turns away to his plate. Reina addresses the orange juice just brought to her. She watches the condensation race down like rain on a windshield.</p>
<p>The noise echoes in the dining hall as separate people carry on their separate conversations. Under the table, again, Jimmy's knee brushes hers.</p>
<p>"Girlie," Robert's attention catches hers and she looks to him across the food. "Did you hear that? We're taking all of you out to go shopping."</p>
<p>"Oh, that sounds good." A genuine excitement fills her. The waiter arrives with her omelet. She catches John Paul Jones' greeting smile - she hasn't seen him since last month - and echoes it.</p>
<p>"Are you well?" He asks. His politeness is always porcelain-tinged. She can't believe he keeps up with the other three.</p>
<p>"I am. Long flight yesterday, but I'm here now. How are you? How was your family?"</p>
<p>"Oh, good," he pauses and sips his drink. "Wish I could stay there forever."</p>
<p>"I understand," she tells him, but truly, she doesn't. Jimmy touches her now, on her thigh, and she gives him her eyes.</p>
<p>By the shape of his jaw and the lowered fall of his head, hunched, tired, beaten, it's almost as if he's apologizing to her. But Reina shrugs off his images and picks at the omelet.</p>
<p>After the entire table is finished eating and dissolves into small talk - Jimmy is silent the majority of the time, unless spoken to, and his plate is taken away only half-eaten - Richard gestures to the women.</p>
<p>"Come on, now, let's be off. Leave the men to their jokes." He wears a playful accent that makes the younger girls giggle. "We've only got one car so you'll all have to pile up."</p>
<p>Reina stays seated as the other women rise. Robert gives her an expected stare, but she avoids it and receives Jimmy.</p>
<p>Like last night, his response doesn't come, and she finally breaks from him to follow the glossy group already walking from the hotel.</p>
<p>They talk and laugh, trading remarks about the newest band they've listened to and where and how and with whom they spent the night. Reina catches snippets of complaints: "No, it was only Greg, a roadie, and all he wanted was a blowjob. . ." "Two lines and that was it. . ." "It wasn't even that good."</p>
<p>She feels out of place and old as she watches them trail ribbons from their petite waists. She wonders which one got the gift of placing those flowering marks on Jimmy's throat. The progression flows out to the parking garage, where they laugh and argue over who will sit where.</p>
<p>Richard smacks a hand down onto the passenger seat when a young blonde tries to call shotgun. "Ah, ah, ah, this is saved for someone very special." And Reina watches as he beckons her past the girl and into the car. She sits beside him and stares at the glove box, embarrassment flashing over her skin.</p>
<p>"I appreciate that," she swallows and stretches her legs out.</p>
<p>"You're the queen after all, aren't you?" Richard starts the car. "Royalty deserves the best."</p>
<p>She shakes her head and stares out the window. The last two girls are managing to squeeze in. Seven, altogether, with Reina in the front, are packed in the car. She knows for sure that the back bumper must be edging the ground by now.</p>
<p>"How was it?" Richard pulls from the parking complex and switches on the radio. T. Rex is playing. One of the girls in the back begins to sing along.</p>
<p>"With him? Nothing exciting." Reina smooths her jeans to her thighs.</p>
<p>"With that man, everything is exciting. Fess up."</p>
<p>She suddenly scoffs. She almost can't control the sound of derision. "You sound just like Georgina."</p>
<p>"The fucking little redhead? Come off, girl, loosen up or he'll never give you what you want."</p>
<p>"And what do I want, Richard Cole?"</p>
<p>"Ricardo, remember, sweetie? You just want a nice fuck, that's all. And then a chat afterward and a walk on the beach and a wedding ring and all that dumb shit. Shorten your list some. Maybe then he'll be able to meet it."</p>
<p>The main street is packed with people. A high voice in the backseat says they're all here for Zeppelin.</p>
<p>"But I don't want all that," Reina breathes lowly. She plays with her fingers in her lap. "I just..."</p>
<p>"What are we going shopping for, anyways?" The same voice breaks through to the front seat. It belongs to a young woman with black curls and bronze eyeshadow.</p>
<p>"We'll all be going to a party tomorrow night," Richard announces.</p>
<p>The girls squeal in delight and Reina wraps her arms around herself, careful eyes on the road as Richard parks in front of a clothing boutique. Immediately, the back doors open on both sides and the girls exit.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Meeting in Chicago</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><br/>In the hotel lobby, Jimmy sits and smokes a cigarette. His long legs are thrown overtop one another and he balances a book on his thigh in the red leather seat. Reina sees him before he sees her.</p>
<p>"Hey," she says and comes around the curve of his chair to stand in front of him. She holds her bag from the boutique, clothing and jewelry bought with the band's money, and lets her lips rise into a smile.</p>
<p>Jimmy looks up from his reading and sets the book down in his lap. Reina wants nothing more than to crawl into it now, settle in the warmth of his embrace, and sleep. His hair and face look washed, although he still wears the aviators from the morning. He reaches for her bag and transfers the cigarette to his mouth, "What's in here?"</p>
<p>She hands it over and watches as he picks up a limp, folded garment, wrapped in pastel pink tissue paper. He takes it like he's opening a present and holds the dress in front of him: black and sequined with a plunging neckline and a figure-hugging shape. He fingers the material and makes eye contact.</p>
<p>"What?" She huffs. "You don't like it?"</p>
<p>Jimmy shrugs and refolds the dress, taking a sweet white box from the bag. "It's not what I would've picked out for you."</p>
<p>Reina slumps into the seat beside him at the sound of his voice. She watches while he examines the bracelet she chose, but her gaze fades to the rest of the hotel when he doesn't give an immediate judgment. Everywhere they've stopped on the tour is nicely furnished. Things are pretty, things are in order. A bundle of the girls from before pass through the lobby; Reina turns to avoid them and looks at her nails instead — misshapen, competing lengths. She hides them in her fists.</p>
<p>Jimmy's smoke swirls across the small table between them and he breathes, "Are you coming to rehearsal?" She looks, watches him give an approving nod to her bracelet and curl it back into the bag. He smashes his cigarette butt into the ashtray between them and meets her stare. She can just make out his eyes in the light, catching the degree of them, the bitterness she wants to trap and store.</p>
<p>"Yeah, I was planning to." Reina brings a hand to his face. "Can I see you?"</p>
<p>But he's quick to pull away from her, shrugging, protecting the frames with his hand. "It's too bright . . . did you enjoy your shopping?"</p>
<p>It had been nice, really, to be a young girl again and find the attractions of clothing. She forgot how much she loved shopping. "I did. I'll be right back, I need to bring this upstairs."</p>
<p>Before she can leave the lobby, walking away with thoughts of tomorrow, he calls her back. "The key," he reminds. She returns to watch him pull it from his shirt pocket and the action, his fingers fishing, his face a mask, slithers deep into her memory. She thinks of it in the elevator, walking to the suite, coming back and joining him in the car to Chicago Stadium, sitting on an amp and watching Bonzo and Robert argue about Robert's sore throat. Jonesy had told her on the last tour that the country boys fought when they were nervous, suddenly cold without their children or homes, or farms. And then what do the city lads do? she'd asked. Some take their drugs. Some sneak their women into America to spend Christmas holiday with. Jonesy has a giggle that lights her chest.</p>
<p>The night passes uneventful from the side of the stage. Reina's engrossed once more, less by the band this time than the fans above, fighting on the balcony. Robert presses a comment in between numbers and asks them to calm down. He's weary and his voice has a cracking air to it. She's disappointed by their American comeback but doesn't say anything when the show ends and Jimmy grabs her backstage.</p>
<p>Despite the lightning of performing, his attitude it still droopy, blanketed with the downers she'd found in his shirt, tucked away in a little golden pillbox. His body shines with sweat and she watches with pathetic, open lips as he peels his shirt and jacket. The lights of the dressing room swim and reflect in the drops that wander his torso, splashing him with tiny stars.</p>
<p>All she can ask for now is his voice.</p>
<p>"Jimmy?"</p>
<p>"Hmm?" He covers himself with his cotton long-sleeve. She craves him in t-shirts.</p>
<p>"Are you gonna stay in the room tonight?"</p>
<p>His sigh rises to the ceiling and thins when it reaches her ears. "I don't know yet." He faces her directly. "Will you be there when I wake up?"</p>
<p>She folds away with a clench of her jaw and begins to walk the length of the dressing room. "I don't know yet," she answers.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Yet, they lie beside each other in the morning, awakened by the ringing phone. Reina imagines she's back in Plumpton next to Jimmy's heat, buried in Egyptian cotton sheets. She opens her eyes under covers and receives the dull, breaking glow of the sun.</p>
<p>"Yeah, I'm coming down soon. Tell G to hold on." Jimmy's voice warbles in her sleep-heavy mind. It's the color of blue, she thinks, such a soft tone.</p>
<p>He sets the receiver back on the holder with a click and Reina feels the bed rise. Fabric rubs and unfolds as she listens to him dress. He breathes deeply; her eyes shut at the sound, open again when his footsteps pad across the carpet. She wants a bath with him, milk in the morning, flower picking in the afternoon. And she needs to see his photo album again, with newspaper cutouts of him at nineteen. It's becoming humid under the sheets.</p>
<p>Like a corpse shedding a shroud, Reina lifts herself slowly from the bed. "Are you leaving now?" She asks. His back is to her, leaving her to find him reflected in the bedroom mirror.</p>
<p>"We're having breakfast somewhere in the city. Peter wants to talk." He fixes his collar and moves to the bathroom.</p>
<p>She sits in bed for a few minutes until Jimmy returns and tilts his head to her:</p>
<p>"Are you coming?"</p>
<p>For the morning she picks out a pair of wide-leg pants and a frilly cropped shirt and brushes her hair while Jimmy bothers with the news on the radio. She's been so preoccupied with him lately that she's forgotten her surroundings. The weather reports say it will rain tonight. There was a burglary the night before. And tonight, Led Zeppelin will be performing again at the Stadium. Jimmy switches off the radio and heads for the door. Reina follows. She thumbs the money she earned in Plumpton, folding it into her pocket.</p>
<p>It's only a short drive to the place downtown, but in consistence, Jimmy's late. The entire band, Richard, Peter, and a black-haired man take up the space of two tables outside a corner diner.</p>
<p>"Finally," Peter shouts when Jimmy and Reina step onto the sidewalk. Reminding her of England with its stickiness, the Chicago heat swims around in a circle before settling on her shoulders. The group turn their heads and if she wasn't with Jimmy she'd shrink at the attention, but he only raises a hand.</p>
<p>"I always show up, don't I?"</p>
<p>A voice Reina can't pick up laughs and says, "Always." It belongs to the black-haired man, his arm raised as a greeting in response to Jimmy's. "It's been a bit, hasn't it, Jim?"</p>
<p>She hears him laugh with an animation she hasn't heard in a while. His face warms and he navigates around the chairs to stand behind the man and place a hand on his shoulder. "What are you doing here?"</p>
<p>"Came to see you. Just got done with Bowie in London a few days ago. Thought I'd stop by for the show tonight."</p>
<p>Reina walks to the round table, her eyes serene on the pavement. There are two open seats, one on either side of the musician, and Reina takes the one beside Jonesy.</p>
<p>Peter grunts and points a fat finger. "Be glad you weren't here last night. Horrid. Perce couldn't keep a goddamn note!"</p>
<p>"Now, now, Peter," Robert argues. A light blush has developed on his cheeks, although he wears a little smile. Reina watches, engrossed until Jimmy says her name. She looks up and finds him and his friend both staring at her: two sunglassed, boyish faces, although Jimmy's is much rounder and feminine. A strange familiarity masks the second.</p>
<p>Her tongue rolls, "Hi."</p>
<p>Jimmy sits and grabs at Richard's toast. His companion smiles a broad grin and offers his hand, large, tanned, calloused to Reina. She takes it like a gift. "I'm Jeff."</p>
<p>A recollection of sitting in the living room with Jimmy — he has publicity photos of the Yardbirds spread across the coffee table. He points, "Here's Jim and Chris, that's Keith, and there's Jeff Beck at the end before he left." A tall boy wearing sneakers with an expression like a fight, she'd been fascinated by him. But all her energy was swamped with Jimmy's image in his short hair and donkey jacket, as he called it.</p>
<p>"So you're Jeff . . . Reina." He has a strange face with hidden shadows and solemn bone structure. His hair is messier than it was in the '60s, falling in feathery patterns, and he's dressed in a half-open shirt with a turquoise pendant sitting weighty against bare skin. He pulls in a breath: she can see the impression of his ribs.</p>
<p>"Pretty name. Has Jimmy told you about me? I hope he didn't bring up stuff from when we were kids." Jeff snickers and Jimmy whips around at the laugh.</p>
<p>Reina messes with the plate in front of her. "Oh no. He just told me how you were in the Yardbirds together."</p>
<p>"More than that," Jeff tells her. "We grew up together. I used to go over to Jim's house and we'd have a jam in his front room. He's my brother."</p>
<p>Reina smiles; Jeff returns it and the group begins to settle, ordering food and talking with one another. Peter shouts amongst them and yells about last night's show. Reina turns her attention away and finds Jeff has stolen it with his questions.</p>
<p>"What state are you from?" He sips his coffee and watches her hands pull her fork from her plate. </p>
<p>"I was born in Arizona. I'm staying with my sister in LA for the summer. And you're from Surrey, right? I don't know much about England or anything, just from what Jimmy's told me."</p>
<p>He leans onto his uplifted fist and despite his hidden eyes, Reina can imagine he's taking her up and looking over her. She wishes she would have put lipstick on this morning.</p>
<p>"Surrey, that's right. And what did you do back in Arizona?"</p>
<p>It's strange explaining herself all over again; a sensation climbs up her arms and tingles her cheeks. "I went to school, waited tables, went to roller discos, tried to make it as somebody."</p>
<p>"And you didn't make it?"</p>
<p>"Oh, I'm not saying that . . . I had more expectations for myself. Whereas you've made it. You knew what you wanted to do, Jimmy too, and both of you made it."</p>
<p>He opens his mouth, but Jimmy calls him for a period of reminiscing. And suddenly, Reina is alone again in a sea of men.</p>
<p>She eats her food in silence until the groups start to break apart, with the promise of seeing each other again at seven o'clock. Robert, Peter, and Bonzo move out to walk along the streets, Richard following closely with his eyes trailing on a girl. Jonesy excuses himself back to the hotel with a brief touch to Reina's shoulder.</p>
<p>Jeff sighs and rises, his body elongating a stretch that shows Reina the naked pull of his hips. He points across the street. "My car's over there. We can find something to do."</p>
<p>What Reina sees is a blue muscle car sitting in the middle of brown and tan station wagons. She nearly springs from the diner.</p>
<p>"That's your car?" She asks him.</p>
<p>"'69 Stingray. You recognize it, right, mate?"</p>
<p>"How could I forget?" Jimmy answers and the trio crosses over to Jeff's Corvette. Reina has to sit on Jimmy's lap in the two-seater. He pulls the seatbelt around them both and Jeff starts the engine. It rubbles, deep like a caught breath, as Jeff pulls into the city traffic and suggests they visit a record shop. Jimmy heartily agrees.</p>
<p>Reina shuts her eyes for a brief second. It all reminds her of being a teenager here with these two men. All she needs is the desert and The Doors. Then, she'd be back home.</p>
<p>Once shopping, they split to different sections, Jeff and Jimmy frequently coming back to share finds. A couple of patrons and the owners recognize them: Reina watches from above the wooden stacked cases as they talk and sign autographs. Despite the looks they initially give, she knows they both love it. The three of them reconvene outside the store to compare their music.</p>
<p>Mostly Blues and RnB in Jimmy's hands, little, worn 45s she's never heard of. Jeff has some Jazz, which she leans in to see, and Blues musicians as well. Reina's picked up her favorites in Tim Buckley and The Ink Spots with the orange Jeff Beck Group album just to appeal to him.</p>
<p>"Oh, you have good taste," he jokes with a grin that makes her belly turn vulnerable. If Jimmy paid attention to the interaction, he didn't speak a word and only files back to the car where Reina slouches into him once more.</p>
<p>She just enjoys being with them, listening to their banter and hanging on the words, never guessing Jimmy would have long time friends. He seems to hold people back behind a glass wall. But Jeff can joke with him easily, never missing the understanding.</p>
<p>After seeing the city and checking a bookstore on Jimmy's demand, Jeff takes them back to the hotel.</p>
<p>"Where are you staying?" Jimmy asks him from the sidewalk.</p>
<p>"On the other side of town. The Intercontinental."</p>
<p>"Mmm. We're meeting up tonight, after the show. Think you'll come with us?"</p>
<p>"Sure. Will you be there, Reina?" He's taken off his sunglasses by now and his eyes are a dull blue-grey, stormed sky.</p>
<p>"Yeah," she whispers. And again, that grin, like a flower blooming in her stomach.</p>
<p>He says goodbye to them and Reina watches his beautiful car drive down the street and turn the corner. She puts her hand up to her face. Tonight, she'll line her eyes and spray perfume in the valley of her breasts. Tonight, she'll offer Jeff to dance with her and maybe he'll follow. </p>
<p>"You like him, huh?" She can barely hear Jimmy.</p>
<p>"Yeah, I do." When she turns and goes inside the hotel with him, he grabs her arm and ushers her in the elevator quickly.</p>
<p>"What are you planning?" He asks. His face, hard with drawn brows and a frown, is multiplied in the mirrored inside of the elevator. The lift sings as it rises up the floors.</p>
<p>Reina shakes her head. "I'm planning?" Something akin to fear is like a snake around her throat. She leans on the brass handle.</p>
<p>"You've known me long enough now to know I'm not an ignorant man—"</p>
<p>"What are you talking about?"</p>
<p>"I'm not blind either. Don't play."</p>
<p>They reach the eighth floor. Jimmy places his hand on her lower back and pushes her forward. "Look at me." She stills, faces him, and moves too slow to avoid the hand that grabs her face. "I didn't like this today. You're mine, understood? I'm the only one who can touch you and have you."</p>
<p>Reina stares, wild, at his still expression. She's searching for any form of comfort and shakes her head when she doesn't find it. Alarmed, she rips away.</p>
<p>"I don't even know who you are!" A frantic shout leaves her mouth. She doesn't even recognize it as herself, but it carries and follows her to the end of the hall where she sits and stares at her heels. The pattern on the carpet is gaudy with gold leaves and red roses. Curiosity fights her stubbornness and she raises her look.</p>
<p>Jimmy, from afar, is a dark shape. He turns his back to her and disappears around the corner to his suite.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Being a Lady</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Afternoon sun leaps into the hall from the single window, warming Reina's back and draping her shadow across the carpet. The floor is nearly silent with thudding doors and moving guests. She wipes her eyes and finding them dry, stands.</p>
<p>She recalls what Richard said in the car yesterday. About wanting. With five awkward steps past the elevators, she decides to turn the corner and walk to Jimmy's room. They've only been apart for several minutes, but her stomach churns. She presses her hand to the wood of the door, to feel the painted grain, and knocks. </p>
<p>Reina listens for him. She smiles when a roadie passes her with suspicious eyes and drags her shoe across the carpet. Her body feels heavy and stinging.</p>
<p>With a click, the door opens and Jimmy stands in the space. She feels she's met him many times like this: shirtless and brooding. His eyes sit at half-mast.</p>
<p>"Jim." Her wet lips meet in a syllable. She shifts her weight and crosses her arms over her exposed midriff.</p>
<p>"What do you want?" His words drip from his mouth; she knows he's taken more Valium.</p>
<p>Many things. But she steps to him and pulls herself inside when he doesn't close the door. Muted sun manages to seep under the balcony doors' drawn curtains. The cold sends goosebumps spreading to her shoulders, making Reina clear her throat. </p>
<p>She speaks with her back to him. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have acted the way I did with him. I . . . apologize."</p>
<p>He's silent. Her heart spins in the time he doesn't speak. Until finally, his breath as she knows it and his words:</p>
<p>"I don't want it becoming a habit with you."</p>
<p>She shakes her head and looks at him. "It won't."</p>
<p>"Good," he mutters and drifts past to the bedroom. Her legs feel glued to the carpet as she identifies the rustle of sheets and comforter. She imagines his body turning fetal on itself and the leaking lines stretching from the impact of his form on the bed. Too much.</p>
<p>She begins undressing in the sitting room, discarding her clothes over the sofa's back and shucking her shoes. Her hair is messy from the wind and she brings it up and back, tying it in a makeshift knot around itself. Something within her muscles begs for rest.</p>
<p>Jimmy is exactly how she imagined when she steps past the threshold. His hair is a juxtaposition against the white eiderdown and the swell of his knees is curved and sideways. Before climbing into the bed, she opens his pillbox and takes a baby blue Valium from the mess, like she's taking a mint. She swallows it without water. Its bitter grain pinches the back of her throat.</p>
<p>Her lips are heavy with whispers. Careful, she brings her legs up and joins Jimmy. It is all so, so familiar: his back and vertebrae and the childish space where his waistband parts from his skin. Reina is desperate; she curls against him, knees pressed and folded, hands in prayer beneath her cheek, close enough she wishes he would absorb her, thoughts and wishes and body and heart.</p>
<p>His lungs expand and deflate and Reina catches and grazes the motion. The very beginnings of the drug take effect: her heart rate slows and she congeals into the mattress. There is always a time for sense and a time for thought, Jimmy had told her once when they were stoned. She has his skin beneath her fingers, cold and soft, and the distant song of his breath, good enough to make her fall asleep.</p>
<p>But she doesn't make it into slumber. Despite the pill and the sweet nearness of Jimmy, Reina is wide awake with alarm. The night bristles and hums in her mind, but Jeff's presence lies underneath it all in a rush she can't dismiss. She decides, in bed with Jimmy, that she can't stay at his side during tonight's party.</p>
<hr/>
<p>"Tell him to get up." Robert's voice drags over the phone line.</p>
<p>Reina twists the cord around her finger until the nerves numb and the skin turns deep red.</p>
<p>"Yeah," she replies.</p>
<p>"Reina?"</p>
<p>"Hmm?"</p>
<p>"You know you've got a job now, right? You're Pagey's caretaker on this tour; keep an eye on him."</p>
<p>Robert ends the call before Reina can reply. But even then, she's not sure what she would have said. She switches off the TV and rejoins Jimmy in the bedroom. He's sprawled, the pale inner of his arm stretching in a fall from the bed. His mouth is open.</p>
<p>Reina walks to him and treats herself: her arms wrap around his torso and her head falls on his chest. For a second her eyes close and there is no ache, no question.</p>
<p>Jimmy's breaths fall suddenly out of line and he rouses, then calms. He shares Reina's embrace and his large hands sweep across her back. She breathes deeply. Time passes.</p>
<p>"You have to get up for rehearsal." She'd rather have stayed quiet and let herself decay into him, but she's been too selfish already. They unwind from each other.</p>
<p>As if he's lost his voice, he rises silently and moves to the closet. His stage outfits are hung neatly in black dress bags and he takes one over his arm with a gentle sweep. Watching him act excites her. All his movements seem like sweet, hidden jewels. She has a habit of staring at him in these moments of mundanity.</p>
<p>Jimmy picks a folded t-shirt from the suitcase and pulls it over his head. Reina turns the other way and opens her shopping bag from yesterday, pulling the sequined dress from its tissue paper along with the bracelet.</p>
<p>"Take them with you," Jimmy breaks the stillness. "Get ready after the show so you don't sweat all your makeup off."</p>
<p>Something about his words makes her want to laugh, but she nods instead. Her mind is still clogged slightly from the Valium, the world cast in a washy glaze. Gathering her makeup, perfumes, and glitters takes short work and fills her with elation. It's been long since she truly dressed up and went out to have fun.</p>
<p>She wears her morning clothes and the shoes she'd left under the sofa. In the long mirror, she takes her brush to her hair and comes back with the waft of Jimmy's shampoo. In another time, she would have berated him for using her hairbrush, and laughed and kissed him when his brows rose and his eyes widened to mock her. But her hopeful playing sparks and dies like an unfed fire when he walks past without words.</p>
<p>She meets with Jimmy again by the hotel room door and they take the elevator down together. His image, copied in the mirrors, brings back her fear from the morning. She swallows and looks at him, but his face is blank as a slate of marble. Maybe he's already washed it from his thoughts, or maybe the drugs have let him forget. Reina ignores it for once, and merely travels along with him, down into the car, along the streets, to the Stadium again.</p>
<p>Robert says he's happy to see Jim alive and well, his eyes fresh and darting to Reina. She gravitates to the rhythm section in an effort to wipe his smug smile. Jimmy and Robert dwell in blunt conversation.</p>
<p>"Hello," she tells John and Jonesy and shares her warmth between the two of them. She's wanted embraces from the start of the day; Jonesy laughs when she refuses to let him go.</p>
<p>"You're fine, darling, are you not?"</p>
<p>"Of course she is," Bonham says. "She just loves her two favorite men, is all."</p>
<p>She smiles and touches his shoulder. "Yes, that's it."</p>
<p>"Will ya stay and watch? Or are ya too tired? That gaffer's a fuckin' pain to deal with. Usually, I'll give him a right smack on the back of the head." Bonzo mimes in the open air, drawing his open palm back and forward.  "Whack! Shuts up after that."</p>
<p>For a moment, she doesn't know who he's talking about until her eyes stretch across the backroom to see Jimmy messing with his hair. She hides her feelings with a giggle, but secretly, she wonders if John knows what happened between them. Or can guess. It's sobering to remind herself she isn't the first.</p>
<p>Jonesy laughs and begins the procession to the stage. Reina tells John she'll think about it before staying back and sitting at the long row of vanities. Jimmy catches her eye as he passes. She's not surprised to find a warning snake-coiled in his irises. He's right, she knows he's not an ignorant man. Still, he only stares long enough to see the shake of her head and not the crossing of her fingers behind her back.</p>
<p>They sound good tonight, much better than before, and the sound dips and dives to Reina all the way back to the twisting corridors. She thought about it, and decided no, for fear Jeff would be somewhere in the audience and Jimmy might blow up immediately at the sight of them together. But more than that, the shows have lost their treat. She knows Jimmy's tricks and Robert's proud body and the groove they can establish when Jonesy locks in on Bonzo's kick drum.</p>
<p>An acidity labors her veins and she talks swiftly with the men and women who ask for her time backstage. There's only one person she'd care to see.</p>
<p>And he's the third musician to return after the show. Sweating Robert, sweating John, and clear-faced Jeff. His eyes find her in a chair against the wall. She smiles, wants to rise, but catches herself when she finds Jimmy following close behind. He pours himself a whiskey and kneels down in front of Reina.</p>
<p>"How are you, my good girl?" His fingers are rough and wet on her cheek. His pupils are blown and his eyelashes are long and clumped from caught sweat. Always beautiful. She resists the urge to take his face in her hands.</p>
<p>"Fine."</p>
<p>"Just fine? What's bringing you down?" His face pulls in mock concern and she stares down at her folded hands. A disobedient child caught in the act. She feels a weight press to her shoulders.</p>
<p>"I should get dressed."</p>
<p>"Let me help you, then," he says and takes her up by the wrist. She doesn't want to be alone with him, but her tongue is fat and heavy in her mouth. They step around the loud group of Zeppelin and entourage and slip out into the hall. "Where are your things?"</p>
<p>"Back in there." She points with her free hand. He lets her go and she stands, anguished in the doorway. She folds her arms over her chest and looks at the ground. It's not long until she hears footsteps again, but these are louder than Jimmy's and the hand that touches her waist has a different warmth.</p>
<p>"Are you alright?" Jeff asks when their gazes meet. She notices he's changed his jeans for white pants and his sneakers for platforms. But the necklace he wears still kisses his chest each time he moves.</p>
<p>She attempts to relax her face, and gives him a small smile.</p>
<p>"I was looking for you out there," he continues. His thumb rubs her bare skin and shivers tingle across her nerves. "I didn't expect to find you hidden away."</p>
<p>"I didn't feel like it today."</p>
<p>He gives her a look-over. She likes his eyes the best, and the way his lids droop, both boyish and seductive at the same time. He doesn't share the same delicate skin as Jimmy, in fact, his cheeks are acne-scarred and sun-leathered. Arousal hits her suddenly like a wave.</p>
<p>"Are you sure you're doing well?" Jeff asks again.</p>
<p>"Yes, she's fine," Jimmy interrupts. Behind them, he holds her bag and frowns. "Sometimes she just can't handle this amount of people."</p>
<p>Jeff moves from in front of the door, allowing Jimmy to set his hands on Reina's hips. His look is fiery, withheld beneath the softness of his lips, the laughter lines that are beginning to deepen with age. </p>
<p>"A shy one, just like you, Jim?" Jeff touches his friend's back and Jimmy looks at him and smiles.</p>
<p>"Yes, something like that. Now, come on, Reina, we'll all meet up again after you get dressed."</p>
<p>"Alright," she squeaks and follows Jimmy's direction down the hall. His voice wavers:</p>
<p>"We'll see you in a few, Jeff, and walk down together."</p>
<p>Reina's head is pounding; she doesn't catch Jeff's reply. Instead, her focus is on her steps, the hard hand at her back, and Jimmy's coldness.</p>
<p>He guides her inside of an empty single bathroom and shuts the door. The lock clicks and the sound reverberates within Reina's body. When Jimmy turns, his breath heaves and he seems to wither. </p>
<p>"How can I trust you," he begins, "when I only turn my back for a second and find you drooling like a bitch in heat?"</p>
<p>An evil ache burrows. She hasn't felt this way in so long, since she left Tucson. She has no words to give. </p>
<p>"And for my best mate, Reina? What's come over you? Such a sweet, devoted girl." He takes her dress first from the bag and holds it up. The dull bathroom light turns the black sparkles an ugly brown. "Wearing clothes fit for the slags in the other room . . . I am disappointed, my dear, after everything I gave you."</p>
<p>Her body is limp. If she weren't leaning against the vanity, she'd crumble at his feet. Jimmy pulls her forward and tugs her shirt's hem upward. Her arms rise in instinct and memory, and in instinct and memory, her cheeks ache with tears. She wishes he'd smile at her, but he unclips her bra in the back and folds it atop her shirt. </p>
<p>"I never expected this when I saw you the first time. I knew you were obedient. I knew you were just a bird wanting to explore, could see it in your eyes." He crouches and unzips her slacks. They fold down her legs in a tan pile before he picks them up with the same treatment as her top. And finally, he lowers the zipper of her dress, hidden beneath the armhole, and slips it over her head. "I knew I had to take care of you, but I just didn't realize how quickly you'd turn against me. I've been so good to you, haven't I?" He talks while he dresses her, shimmying the tight dress over her hips and fastening it. </p>
<p>He pulls her heels and the bracelet from the bag afterward and tilts his head to the side. </p>
<p>"Haven't I?" He asks again. </p>
<p>Reina knows she must have a child's expression on her face, that tight frown and huge eyes, and the mere imagining causes hot tears to begin at her ducts.</p>
<p>The exchange of her shoes, the doing of her bracelet, and then his eyes: the ones she needed to calm her and give her attention. </p>
<p>They stare, they judge. She watches his mouth move. "Why are you crying, Reina? I didn't mean to make you cry . . . Come on now and clean up. Put your makeup on. I'll wait for you outside." </p>
<p>And then he's gone and she's alone in the restroom, grabbing paper towels to dry her eyes. She powders her face and draws mascara over her lashes, spreading silvery eyeshadow above heavy, dark liner on her lids. She finishes her lips pink, steps into a cloud of perfume, and leaves with her bag in her hand. </p>
<p>As promised, Jimmy is waiting outside of the venue. Jeff stands beside him, their poses matching in relaxed coolness. As soon as Reina's heels send a clacking rhythm across the pavement, their heads turn. </p>
<p>Jimmy holds out his hand and she doesn't know what else to do than take it. "It's only a block down. You'll be able to walk in your shoes, right?"</p>
<p>"Of course," she tells him. She's stuck between the two men, Jimmy on her right and Jeff against her left. A breeze whispers past, lifting strands of her hair. They're silent. Jeff puffs on a cigarette and the heavy tobacco scent hovers around. It increases once they drift inside of the club: drinkers at tables getting high on all sorts of goodies. Jimmy tells her to find them a booth and he and Jeff order cocktails for the three of them. Everything seems to be spinning quickly. Reina can't identify something singular, a color, a smell, a face, or an outfit. It all blends into one another and hurries past when Jimmy returns with a deck of cards and the alcohol. By now, a congregation has formed, people desperate to latch onto the two guitarists, and again, Reina is trapped with the men on either side. </p>
<p>Jimmy got her a screwdriver and her hands shake at the reminder, too much she can't play a game of poker with the rest of the table. She shuts her eyes and hears softly:</p>
<p>"I'm not a gambling man." Jeff's voice pitched with a laugh. </p>
<p>"We wouldn't want you playing, with your temper and all," Jimmy remarks. The group erupts into chuckles and Reina turns her head to the side, to hide one ear from the sound. Her body is exhausted, weighted with frustration and anger. She wraps herself in her arms and loathes her decisions.</p>
<p>Underneath the table, a palm curves around her knee, the fingertips tickling the bend of her joint, nearly brushing the underside of her thigh. She doesn't need to peek to know who's touching her, but her lids part and she sees Jeff's silver bracelet on his wrist, his veins weighty. She allows her arms to fall beside her on the booth's leather. And he takes the sign, half-engaged with the drunken conversation of a French woman, and climbs his touch upward. </p>
<p>Reina leans to sip her drink, his digits pass the border of her hem. Suddenly, she rises, and announces to the table, "I have to go to the bathroom." She grabs her bag of clothes from beside her feet.</p>
<p>This beckons another round of laughter from the guests, but she only turns her attention to crawling over Jimmy in an effort to reach the end of the booth. Standing, she straightens her dress and navigates through the swell of people to the front of the club. She breaks the doors open and breathes deeply into the night air. </p>
<p>On the walk over, Jeff had pointed out his car to them. Down the street, on the other side, it sits and glows under a street lamp. Reina crosses over and finds it, leaning against the passenger door just to feel the cool chrome on her hot, bare skin.</p>
<p>There are numerous people around the city tonight, and a few men attempt to stop and talk to her.  She brushes them off. "I'm waiting for someone." </p>
<p>And soon, Jeff's figure comes from across the street, his steps rhythm-edged, his head turned to look both ways. Something like triumph reddens Reina's chest. He reaches the car and unlocks the doors. She immediately sits down and takes a long exhale. Jeff shuts them in. He turns to look at her. </p>
<p>"Tell me where . . ." His figure is desperate and asking, hand pressed against the steering wheel. She'd have him right now, if the street lamp wasn't illuminating them. </p>
<p>"I don't know. Your hotel?"</p>
<p>"That's fine." Jeff drives, taking her into the city. She leans her head against the window and watches the lights pass. Skyscrapers, apartment buildings, offices, and parking garages: if Jimmy didn't like the music, he'd probably hate Chicago, she thinks. But she looks over at Jeff, sees his nervous smile, and empties Jimmy from her mind.</p>
<p>Outside of the hotel, Jeff helps her from the car. "I wanted to tell you earlier," he says, "you look like a film star, Reina."</p>
<p>Her tongue traces her lips and her throat hovers with a breath. "Jeff . . ." It's the only response she can give, and the only response he needs to hear as they hurry to his room. Eleventh floor, she memorizes, but her consciousness is too plagued to recall the suite number.</p>
<p>Jeff shuts the door behind him while Reina takes in her surroundings. The room is colorful, although drab without light, and she sets her bag aside to wander into the bedroom. The bed's been made and no mess occupies the space. Her heartbeat relaxes and she takes a seat at the foot. </p>
<p>"Darling," Jeff's voice lulls. She finds him in the doorway, dark and pale. She knows these tones. Stretching one leg out to him and watching him step forward ignites the match in her torso again. He drops down to his knees and her inhibitions crumble as she watches him unbuckle her shoes from her feet. </p>
<p>Reina had different ideas for how this would go. She's missing the champagne and pastries. She's missing herself drunk and dewy. Instead, her nervous system is one long livewire. And Jeff sets her off when he helps her back onto the bed, her head buried in pillows, her dress hitching up to expose her panties. She moans and gives up, not bothering to undress him or study his body naked, only assisting with the zipper of her dress and the downward pull of her underwear. </p>
<p>He left his jewelry on: the pendant scrapes her stomach when he pecks her face, divulges in the sweetness of her neck. The cold metal of his bracelet makes her muscles convulse. His body is warm and loving and perfect. There is no mystery to solve or way to act, she lets him want her and lets herself want him. She hoards the pleasure his fingers give her, twisting with an ache so good she cries out fully. She could come from just his hands and his mouth at her chest, but he drags away and looks down on her body, unfurled like a spring flower. </p>
<p>"You are such a beautiful woman," he tells her. Reina's presence is barely a cloud, stunned and shocked. "Will you let me?" </p>
<p>She nods and grabs at his arms, bringing him back down upon her, and lifts her hips to join him. The noise she makes is unrecognizable to her, low, in the back of her throat. Jeff matches it and his face falls into the drag of her shoulder. She has just enough energy to wrap her legs around his waist and help herself to ecstasy. </p>
<p>The feeling is a burst. All her worries unravel and spread and she finds her mouth filled with his name, relishing the taste. Her body goes lax, but Jeff rushes through the remains of her climax to bring himself to the end. </p>
<p>Reina gluts on the sensation of him falling against her and the wrapping of their limbs. His groans dissolve, but, still, she doesn't want to let him go. </p>
<p>"Reina . . ." He gasps.</p>
<p>She wants to hear those two syllables in her ear forever. She wants to memorize Jeff and this space. She wants to stay with a man she hardly even knows. And for once, she doesn't judge herself for desiring. And for once, she lets herself sleep undisturbed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Facing the Light</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I didn't wake you, did I?" Jeff's voice is brand-new. It makes Reina think she must still be asleep, coasting on dreams.</p>
<p>He is surrounded by a garden of Hendrix albums, warmed from the light of the open curtains. He's shirtless and his spread, denimed legs border his portable record player as it spins and plays <em>Axis: Bold As Love. </em></p>
<p>She shakes her head and her eyes trip over the fold of his body and how he leans to the sound. He stares from under his choppy bangs with a held pout. The way he regards her could set her on fire. She gathers her gown of sheets above her chest and trails to him, settling down beside, and causing the blankets to puff and fold around her. </p>
<p>"Little Wing" begins with its sharp, poignant notes and Reina falls and cowers into Jeff's warmth. If her mother knew the number of men she'd touched while traveling the US . . . She laughs and the sound causes Jeff to look down at her. </p>
<p>"What are you thinking about?"</p>
<p>"How good it feels to be here with you." His arms are muscled; she squeezes his bicep and hums to carry the sound of Jimi's voice. "Thank you."</p>
<p>"For being here?" Jeff brings his arm around her shoulders and holds her to his side.</p>
<p>"Yes, I think." Her brows knit. She stares ahead at his socked feet and the turn, turn, turn of the vinyl. Her cheek rubs his skin and she presses her mouth to the curve of his arm. He holds a slight salt taste and the male musk of forbidden sex. "Do you exercise?" If she could, she'd drag him down with her.</p>
<p>"Mmm, no . . . I'm a mechanic." He teases her fingers. Something withheld plays across their conversation. "When I'm not in the studio I'm in the garage. It's almost the same thing, trying to work out what sounds right, what feels right."</p>
<p>As he speaks, Reina touches him, achy for the exploration she missed last night. His stubble is prickly on the soft pads of her fingers and his chest rises and falls with breaths. She looks to his face and debates. He swallows his final sentence, returns her gaze with blue-grey eyes. Somehow, he seems to read her mind and moves to hold her cheek.</p>
<p>His lips press, then open: "I think maybe last night was enough."</p>
<p>It's like someone poked at her heart with grubby fingers, Doubting Thomas with his hand in Christ's wound.</p>
<p>"Oh, alright. I just thought . . ."</p>
<p>Jeff shakes his head. "Little Wing" ends and he shuts off the record player before speaking. "This morning I took time to consider. I don't know who you are to Jimmy, but I know if it was I with the beautiful girl, I wouldn't want him stomping all over our friendship just to get his rocks off." He refuses to look back up at her. Sweet, simple-worded Jeff.</p>
<p>She tastes her options. Her hands pull from glazing him and she sets them in her lap. "I'll go back then."</p>
<p>He makes a noise, not in protest, but something small as if he's learning his words. "But first, I'll go down and get you breakfast." He stands and she looks at his legs, long, with a bend of unsureness.</p>
<p>Time seems to moves around Reina, her body still puddled on the floor of Jeff's hotel room. He returns with a shirt on and stops beside her.</p>
<p>"You can put on one of my t-shirts if you want. They're in my suitcase." He pauses. She finds the dirt speckled across his sneakers. "Do you want anything in particular?"</p>
<p>"Fruit," she tells him because it's the first thing to come to mind. Acidic sweetness, the fresh wet of a flowering plant.</p>
<p>Jeff hums and leaves, locking her in a four-walled vault of silence. Her tongue drags a slow mark across her teeth. She unwraps herself and falls back onto the carpet naked with a heartbeat and a pair of angel wings made from the sheets of Jeff's bed. If Jimmy was here — her thought begins, then rewinds. A large globe feels as if it's sitting atop her chest, dark blue and cloudy with regret. Regret, guilt, uncertainty. Her brain speaks up and asks where she plans on going. She shakes her head in response. The ceiling catches thrown light from passing cars and bounces shadows around the room. Reina puts her hands over her eyes.</p>
<p>The phone rings from the desk. <em>This back and forth shit. </em>She stands, disrobed, and picks up the telephone.</p>
<p>"Hello, this is the front desk. Am I speaking with Miss Reina?" A voice on the other end asks.</p>
<p>Her eyes watch dust particles whisper by. "Yes."</p>
<p>"Your husband is asking for you downstairs in the lobby."</p>
<p>Reina's heart drops like an anchor in the sea of her stomach. "My husband?"</p>
<p>"Mr. Cole?"</p>
<p>There's noise on the other end as the concierge passes the telephone. All of her courage falls into the curled cord. </p>
<p>"Good morning, my love," Richard Cole smooches into the phone. And with her courage, the air from her chest seems to vanish too.</p>
<p>"How did you know?" She holds the phone close to her ear and pulls at her lip. </p>
<p>Richard hums. "The plane to Indianapolis leaves in two hours. We missed the first flight. Come on down soon, sweetheart."</p>
<p>"Is Jimmy down there?"</p>
<p>"No. Hurry." Richard hangs up the line and Reina leans against the tiny writing desk. Shaking her head, she takes Jeff's suggestion and pulls one of his t-shirts over her head. It's plain and red and hangs in the arms and stretches across the chest. She finds her bag in the bathroom and her party clothes bundled beside it. A brief look in the mirror shows her make-up clouded face and hair wild and large. She uses her fingers to straighten it, soap to clean her face, and looks back at herself with red eyes and puffy strands.</p>
<p>Her mind is very full, brimmed with thoughts. But her hands' nervous search prevents her brain from spilling over. She smells like Jeff, like a man, like a mechanic and a soft lover with blue eyes to swim in. Her knuckles brush her cheek. So much has happened.</p>
<p>Pulling her pants over her legs and hips, Reina finishes dressing and steps to the door, around the minefield of Jeff's records. She thinks momentarily about picking them up, but leaves instead, out the door.</p>
<p>This morning is a backward play of last night. She remembers the lacing pattern of the hallway wallpaper and its enveloping harshness. She makes it to the elevator and feels her stomach drop with the box — smack, like an egg against concrete.</p>
<p>The doors slide open and the glossy lobby gives itself to Reina.</p>
<p>"Darling!" Richard is standing at the entrance of the dining room, his arm above his head to get her attention. She remembers from Jimmy's lessons that Richard is a chronic alcoholic, chronic liar. <em>Poor combination</em>, Jimmy's lips pursed near her ear as they dance in a London ballroom. </p>
<p>There is nowhere else to go. She walks to him and takes his open hand. He pulls her towards him and hisses into her ear:</p>
<p>"You really fucked up this time." His hand around the back of her neck is a vice. "Gone and fucked it all up."</p>
<p>He releases her before she's able to speak, before her mind is able to draw back memories of her mother yelling at her in the kitchen. She'd let the sweet bread burn, too busy playing outside in the dirt with the frogs. Or her mother yelling at her before school, about the teacher she had a crush on, about the letter she wrote for him but never meant to send. Mamá could not read English, but she knew the poem Reina had slipped among her love-words:</p>
<p>
  <em>Mis manos</em>
  <br/>
  <em>abren</em>
  <em> las </em>
  <em>cortinas</em>
  <em> de </em>
  <em>tu</em>
  
  <em>ser</em>
  <br/>
  <em>te</em>
  
  <em>visten</em>
  <em> con </em>
  <em>otra</em>
  
  <em>desnudez</em>
  <br/>
  <em>descubren</em>
  <em> los </em>
  <em>cuerpos</em>
  <em> de </em>
  <em>tu</em>
  
  <em>cuerpo</em>
  <br/>
  <em>Mis manos</em>
  <br/>
  <em>inventan</em>
  
  <em>otro</em>
  
  <em>cuerpo</em>
  <em> a </em>
  <em>tu</em>
  
  <em>cuerpo</em>
  <em>.</em>
</p>
<p>Richard grabs a plastic to-go box and weaves through the tables to Jeff's seat. Her last-night lover stands and shuts away at her gaze from across the room. There are dozens of patrons eating breakfast; she moves past them to get to him.</p>
<p>"How did you find out?" She asks Richard again, as he shovels the colored bloom of fruit from Jeff's plate into the carry-out box. Her body does not belong.</p>
<p>"The girls told me. They'd just as soon give you up as spread their legs for one of us. It's wonderful."</p>
<p>Jeff clears his throat and passes around Richard's side. He reaches for Reina and she doesn't pull away. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to work out like this. I can tell you're a very sensitive girl."</p>
<p>Her face twists in a grimace and she shies from him.</p>
<p>"No, no, I didn't mean it like that." His rough fingertips scrape her arm as he grabs again. "You just care very deeply. . . I wish I could bring you back to England with me."</p>
<p>She denies and folds her arms, desperate. An old inner voice crawls back to her; she's making a scene. Her eyes find contact with his mouth. It's the best she can do.</p>
<p>"Here," he leans away and returns with a napkin and a pen. "This is my number at home. You can call it whenever you feel like." Jeff scribbles and folds the paper into her hand. But all her muscles seem unnecessary. Soon, she imagines, she'll turn into a pile of what she used to be.</p>
<p>"Are we done?" Richard asks.</p>
<p>Jeff speaks up. "I think so. You won't tell Jim all about it, will you?"</p>
<p>"Your secret's safe with me," Richard mumbles. "Nice catching up with you, Beck." He drags Reina along, out of the dining room. Like Orpheus, she can't help it, and looks behind her at Jeff's sunken form. Another broken heart to add along with Sam's. She almost falls from her feet not moving fast enough. So many things careening around her skull in the last hour. She decides then, to sleep on the plane. </p>
<p>Outside, Richard hails a taxi and pushes Reina inside. He throws the box of fruit into her lap and sighs with his hand against his forehead. </p>
<p>"Jimmy was horrid this morning; he can't take it when he doesn't get his way. I almost wish you would've been there to see him all hungover and putrid-smelling. He was asking for you." Richard shifts and looks at her. "Aren't you going to eat?"</p>
<p>The plastic box contains a mountain of multiple colors: orange and heavy red, dark, bloody purple, and the bare white meat of apples. "My appetite is gone."</p>
<p>"'Cause of Jimmy? Y'know, you sent me on a chase just to get to you. Bad, bad girl. You made us miss the flight. Peter was fuming too; I wonder what'll happen to you when we get back." </p>
<p>Reina looks at him and his face is broken in a smile. His hazel eyes are scrunched from the fat of his cheeks. She's always thought he was unattractive. </p>
<p>Her expression makes him laugh even more. "Don't give me that. It's just the truth." His fingers squeeze her knee and stay stuck for the rest of the ride. </p>
<p>As the city fades, Reina imagines herself opening the car door and allowing her body to fall out. Just to feel the gravel and something earthly. Maybe she never woke at all and is tight in Jeff's arms. She hopes. </p>
<hr/>
<p>Richard sits beside her on the plane where she's squeezed against the window. At other times, she'd eat up the marmalade sky, but today, she draws the blind and curls into herself. She pretends to sleep, just so he'll leave her alone to feel poor for herself. The citrus she ate at the gate makes her stomach bubble, acid on acid; she can't even sleep if she wanted to.</p>
<p>She plays follower once they land in Indianapolis and her surroundings fade into the far wish of a bed. The hotel is nice, as usual, and Richard leads her up to his own room. She stands in waiting while Richard lugs his suitcase into the bedroom. He rubs his hands down his thighs and motions her to the door. </p>
<p>"Well, here we are. Jimmy's on the sixth floor, room 642. Your clothes should be in there." He gives her a final wide grin. "Are you going to fall on your knees and beg for forgiveness?" </p>
<p>Reina hustles past him and collects herself. Her scent bothers her, that distinct sweat and base ache, but she refuses to ask Richard to use his shower. She opens the door and slams it shut. </p>
<p>Recognizing it's only midday makes her heart feel a little lighter. The money from the Plumpton market is stashed away inside of her duffel bag, but she jumps at the opportunity to walk out of the hotel and down into the city. She holds her wits in one hand stepping through the lobby, nervous that lumbering Peter Grant will come out of the shadows like a nightmare. </p>
<p>He doesn't show and she escapes onto the streets of Indianapolis. She just breathes for a while. She's in James Dean's home state and can almost imagine him beside her, midwestern boy and the girl who always liked the desert. </p>
<p>Reina feels the sun on her face, reminding her it's summer. A year before, she went road-tripping with her sister, up and down California with the windows down and grass stuffed in the glove compartment. Paloma was the one who'd taught her how to smoke, back in high school. As she walks, her eyes cross the skyline and she takes a breath of her memory. Another swarm of guilt hits her, like a cloud of locusts, and she has to stop and lean against a storefront to calm herself. Everyone's left Reina, beside her sister. She chews her lip and stares at a black spot of dirtied, stomped gum on the sidewalk.</p>
<p>The hot, stinging tears begin just as a shadow covers the sun and crosses her path. </p>
<p>"Reina?" Robert's voice asks. She looks up and sees him with a halo of sunlight turning his curls a shiny gold. He holds a wide-eyed gaze that shifts into a frown when a tear rolls down her cheek. "You — " </p>
<p>"Come on, let's get back to the hotel," Jimmy interrupts. His dark shape echoes behind Robert's. It makes a depth clog and flutter through Reina. She opens her mouth to respond, but Jimmy walks past and away. </p>
<p>Robert does not move to stop him. Instead, his eyes wash over Reina's look. "Do you want to come back with me?" </p>
<p>She takes his outstretched hand and allows him to guide her, arm slipped around her waist. Ahead of them, Jimmy is stepping across the street and back to the hotel. She'd forgotten how quickly he could move on long legs. </p>
<p>Robert's humming voice vibrates through her torso. "Long day, yes?"</p>
<p>With a voice too little used, Reina speaks up. "Very long."</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0024"><h2>24. Falling in Again</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Peter is livid standing outside the hotel. He takes up the entire space of the revolving door; Reina can't get past him. Sunlight hits and warms the side of her face. It makes her think that it is too much to deal with at the moment.</p>
<p>"What the fuck is all this about? I had to lose money to get your ass on a separate plane this morning. I shouldn't have," he points a finger at her, "but fucking Pagey was losing his mind. 'Can't leave without her . . . blah blah . . .' Be glad Richard found you!"</p>
<p>Robert stands outside smoking a cigarette and leaning his weight on his hip. "What happened, sweetie?" He asks.</p>
<p>Jimmy's already fled. Just the three of them standing in the heat.</p>
<p>Peter starts up again, "She left the club last night with Jeff. No one had any idea where the fuck she was hiding."</p>
<p>Reina looks from Robert to the band's manager. Her brain feels mushy, her face hot and uncontained. She shakes her head and reaches up for the door beside Peter.</p>
<p>"Where are you going?" Peter asks, trying to pull the door in front of her closed. Frustration bubbles in her stomach and she turns on him.</p>
<p>"I'm going to get my clothes," she shouts and forces her way into the lobby.</p>
<p>He's visibly shocked, mouth slack and blue eyes wide. She runs from him as she ran from Jimmy the day before.</p>
<p>Upstairs, her bags are waiting outside of Jimmy's door. She snatches them and scowls, reaching into the duffel to check on the stack of vinyl. All good, no broken records. She clears her throat and looks around, suddenly lost.</p>
<p>The door to Jimmy's suite is white and plain but inviting. She can almost taste the warmth inside. The smell of his skin lingers somewhere in her thoughts and a twisting knot ties in her stomach. She rises from her crouch and walks back through the halls.</p>
<p>Waiting for the elevator to come up, she thinks through the last hours. Jeff's hands on her arms, the look he gave her in the morning — pity, Jimmy in the sunlight of Indiana like cold rain, Jimmy drunk and high. Maybe that's it, she thinks. Non-blonde, non-European, no meadow and first fuck. She was just a girl in a pickup. She'll always be something less. Mamá would know.</p>
<p>When the elevator dings, she clears her throat and expects to see Peter and Robert, fun-house mirror versions of each other. But instead, it's a businessman and Jonesy.</p>
<p>He's carrying a small shopping bag in his hand.</p>
<p>"Reina," he smiles and steps out to join her. "When did you get here?"</p>
<p>"Just over an hour ago . . ." Her voice stills and waits. She looks him over and stares at a strand of hair sweat-stuck to his cheek. She reaches up and picks it to let it fall free.</p>
<p>John gives her a soft regard and motions her along. "I heard what happened," he begins, "with Jeff Beck and all. You spent the night with him?"</p>
<p>"Yes. You must think differently about me now." She follows the parallel line of the baseboard with her gaze.</p>
<p>"No, not really. You're just you. Did he invite you to England with him?"</p>
<p>Her heart unfolds, aching. "Sort of. Why?"</p>
<p>"Just seems to be a pattern . . ." he laughs softly and unlocks his suite. He holds the door open for her.</p>
<p>His room is neat, untouched, and he immediately gestures for her to set her things down. He wipes his hands on his pants and sits on the sofa. Reina goes to join him.</p>
<p>"Jimmy's very upset. He wanted to stay behind and find you himself, but Peter convinced him getting to the next show was more important. But he knows, or can guess, about you and Jeff."</p>
<p>Reina shakes her head and lowers it to rest in her hands. She can feel Jonesy's eyes address her. "Can I stay with you for a couple of days?"</p>
<p>He sets a steady hand on her knee. "Of course."</p>
<hr/>
<p>Another bath for her. Baths daily. Baths forever, where she can dip under the water and shut her eyes and ears to sensation. Only floating. Reina imagines it is 1970 at the community center pool. She wears an orange bikini and sits like a star, legs kicking in the water, arms leaned behind her.</p>
<p>She is in love with musicians. She can count their names on one hand: George Harrison, Jim Morrison, and Jimmy Page. Ripe, full syllables. Strawberries for each, her lips, her embrace and palms and clothing and linen. The pool water ripples and a line of light from the window causes jellyfish patterns to dance across the bottom. In the daydream, her chest heaves with a sigh and her body rattles.</p>
<p>Reina's head breaks from the still bathwater — she pulls in air.</p>
<p>Her body wants to give a cry and her lungs burn it through.</p>
<p>Five days have passed since Indianapolis. While the band runs through the streets of Motor City, Detroit, she sits and sulks. It would be too much to go see them perform. Minutes, hours, days she's spent wasting in Jonesy's hotel rooms. The consistency of his care gets old, as well. Each room is immaculate when entered, immaculate when exited. He gives stories about his childhood when she prods, but most of their talks revolve around family. </p>
<p>He can't understand her point of view: no father, painful mother. She begins to envy him in his set ways and dragging looks.</p>
<p>Reina lifts her heavy body from the bathtub and reaches for a towel. She has not seen Jimmy for these five days. Only a pale wrist from behind Peter's laboring form or his fading image as he walks away, always away. She pats her skin dry and searches for clean clothes to wear. In Milwaukee, she ran down to the laundromat to wash everyone's clothes, even Jimmy's thin-legged jeans and underwear.</p>
<p>She pulls a maxi dress over her head and steps into Jonesy's bedroom. He remade the bed this morning, probably while she'd gone down to breakfast. They alternate days on couch and mattress, so neither one gets too comfortable with the arrangement.</p>
<p>The radio on the nightstand shows a mid-morning time, numbers that seem to blur into each other, and she turns the knob to the local station. Jimmy hates the music that's popular now. He says everyone's lost the essence of song. She rubs the side of her face and listens to Elton John with a frown.</p>
<p>She needs to talk to Jimmy, before New York at least, and make it all right. Guilt is not a foreign feeling to her. It's eaten away a part of her strength.</p>
<p>With a hurried step, she pulls on platforms and runs her fingers through her hair in the mirror. Just a little makeup, she decides and runs a tube of lipstick over her mouth before leaving Jonesy's room and the hotel.</p>
<p>Reina's come to realize she hates cities with all their smog and slick heat and oil-dipped landscapes.</p>
<p>Before he left in the morning, Jonesy told her they'd all be together at the antique store a couple of blocks away, if she needed anything.</p>
<p>She walks, tall in her peach dress with hair blow back, a feeling of anonymity in her stomach. It gets her, leaks into her bones, and gives her the confidence to cross the street in front of moving cars.</p>
<p>The door to the shop is slightly ajar, but the chimes still ring when she enters. Her power is gone and heat replaces it, washing her cheeks as she smiles towards the owner.</p>
<p>The store is loaded with aisles and aisles of old things, just as dark as the city outside. She clears her throat and begins to move to the back of the store. Small things catch her eye: costume jewelry from the 30s, an Altoids tin, a hair clip in the shape of a heart with a cameo attached, and a mirror, dappled with stains. </p>
<p>She looks and it's where she finds him, reflected behind her like a suggestion of a moment.</p>
<p>Jimmy's hair lies against his shoulders and he examines a book with pursed lips. She turns and finds him in real-life. He is the type of man she would see on the street and smile at, the kind to make her pause for a second view as he passed by. </p>
<p>A rush rattles her throat from getting him in all his height and dark curls. Her hips ache as she steps across the store to him. She's read much of how others describe him: dark angelic, sorcerer, artist with a dangerous edge. Her dress sways and she's in front of him, walking down the aisle to his place, with a heart that beats with the pattern of her steps. </p>
<p>His smell catches her, even in the distance between them, earthy evenness. He's noticed her, too, she can tell as his hand recoils without the book he was previously eying. It's strange to be this close to him again. His warmth seems to cling to her skin. </p>
<p>She looks at the stacks of trinkets in front of her. A fake, shiny apple used for decorating dinner table bowls makes its way into her hands. She fondles it for a moment as Jimmy stands until she gives in first:</p>
<p>"Jimmy. . . it wasn't my intention to hurt you."</p>
<p>He stiffens. Wrong thing to say. The apple is a plastic distraction in her grip.</p>
<p>Reina tries again, "I feel horrible. I've been thinking about you every day and how I — if I could go back, I wouldn't do it again. I was just upset. I felt like you were being so controlling of me."</p>
<p>Jimmy clenches his jaw. "I don't want to speak with you." He turns away slightly, a child's expression.</p>
<p>"But I'm stuck here. On this tour. I want to make things right." </p>
<p>He starts to walk from her. She follows. "You can go home any time you want. Tell Peter and he'll set up a flight for you." </p>
<p>"So you want me to leave?"</p>
<p>He sighs and turns to look at her fully. His green eyes are dark and glossy, his hair a mess of dark halo. Even his lips are chapped and paled in comparison to their usual color. Then his gaze straightens and he looks somewhere past her. "I don't know. I don't know what to think of you anymore, Reina."</p>
<p>"Let me explain myself," she whispers and patters after him in the store. He walks swiftly, but not too fast to catch attention. "When you were drunk the other night you told me about your first love. I feel as if I was never the one you wanted. And Jeff seemed like he wanted me, in the moment."</p>
<p>"In the moment?" Jimmy asks. He toys with a gaudy women's top. </p>
<p>"He had me leave in the morning. Why? Does that make you feel better? Did you even hear what I had to say?"</p>
<p>"About me not wanting you?" He gives a small laugh. "You're still stuck on it."</p>
<p>Reina stares. She sets the apple on a random shelf and notices the brisk hair of his sideburns, how it all frames his face at this three-quarter angle. </p>
<p>"Let's start again," she suggests. "All over."</p>
<p>He hums deep in his chest and picks a silk nightie from the rack of bargain clothes. She watches as his teeth reveal to pull the corner of his mouth.</p>
<p>"Alright, Reina. We'll start fresh." With those words, Jimmy hands her the outfit and places a hand on her back.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0025"><h2>25. Beginning Here or There</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jimmy lights a cigarette in his room and stares at Reina. She's in the satin nightie, the lights gleaming from the fabric. It swells around her hips and breasts, makes her girl and woman all at once. She tilts her head to the TV where a bright gameshow runs and whines.</p>
<p>"So what now?" She asks.</p>
<p>He'd led her back to the hotel and upstairs. In the bathroom, she changed by his command. She shaved her legs and under her arms, as the hair had grown prickly, and came out to stand in the new pink outfit: dewy like an angel fresh from heaven.</p>
<p>He shakes his head and blows smoke from his mouth. "This is what you're wearing to the show tonight."</p>
<p>An uncomfortable warmth ripples through her. This is a private outfit. It's what the little groupie girls would wear, without shame and with rouged cheeks.</p>
<p>"And you're going to apologize to everyone backstage. Robert, John, Bonzo, all the roadies, and all the whores."</p>
<p>There's laughing from the TV audience behind her, as if on cue, and Reina crosses her arms over herself. "Apologize to everyone?"</p>
<p>He squashes the cigarette in the coffee table's ashtray. "For making a fool out of me."</p>
<p>She stares at the top of his bent head and the sweet layers of his dark, soft hair. Fighting a lump in her throat, she sits down beside him. His body is a substantial thing. She garners the same emotion from when she touched him for the first time, when he touched her.</p>
<p>The game show takes a break for a set of commercials and Reina steals the background noise as strength. She reaches for him, the empty, bent hands she's memorized and tasted and adored. The hands that make noise, magic, love. He lets her have them and the calluses that come along. But still, Jimmy refuses her eye contact.</p>
<p>"Can I tell you something, Jimmy?"</p>
<p>He's calm, breathing evenly and fading beneath the rising smoke from his busted cigarette. His loneliness aches vivid on him, and despite what he told her before about living a lone life, she senses him.</p>
<p>"I know you," she tells him. "I recognize you, Jimmy, I really do."</p>
<p>He doubles in her grip and a cool state of words comes next. "No, you don't. You said it yourself the other day. You don't even know who I am."</p>
<p>She remembers wrapping around him some days before, so she does it again. As a teenager, she craved touch, imagined giving touch to her three musical crushes, and finds it real now.</p>
<p>Over him, with chapped lips and her lingerie, she lies him down on the sofa. His eyes half-close and his hands sit limply in hers. She has him, his long legs, between her thighs.</p>
<p>Jimmy's tone comes whispery. "Did you hold Jeff like this, too? Or is this only for me?"</p>
<p>"Only for you."</p>
<p>The last few buttons of his shirt are undone; she presses her fingers to the exposed skin.</p>
<p>"Did he say you were a good fuck?"</p>
<p>Reina absorbs herself with the button and zipper of his jeans.</p>
<p>"Nothing. He told me I looked like a movie star."</p>
<p>"Oh, good." He's motionless and doesn't even care to watch her toy with the elastic band of his underwear.</p>
<p>"Will you wear underwear tonight?" She undresses him and arousal immediately heats her body at his sight. She waits for his answer before she begins touching him.</p>
<p>"Why?"</p>
<p>"I wanna be able to make love to you quickly during 'Moby Dick.'"</p>
<p>Jimmy shuts his eyes and a low laugh escapes him. "Only if you don't change."</p>
<p>Shocked, blushed, she goes down on him and gets him before he can turn his thoughts from her. A rush, like a rolling wave, makes her hands tug at his jeans and her own anguish float away. Pleasing him is enough. She thinks of the apple from the thrift store and mischievous Eve beneath the fruit tree. </p>
<p>She can't leave yet, can't go back to LA, because a moment and words hold her down. Plumpton appears like a far off place in her mind where she can play the American mistress, wife, and mother. Jimmy is magic and she craves him all contained to herself. Her eyelids part and she sees him splayed, head thrown back like Boticelli's Mars in slumber. She thinks about speaking, but her mouth is full. </p>
<p>Reina picks up her pace and feels his grip in her hair. A contestant wins big on the game show as applause breaks into her ears: blood rush and excitement. Beneath, Jimmy's slight gasps curl and become her name. His thighs tighten. Reina becomes a mantra on soft lips. Her own lips are red and wet and prideful. She nearly chokes as he comes.</p>
<p>Some time, minutes she can't count, passes. The episode on the TV ends and he moves under her.</p>
<p>Jimmy lifts her head up after it's all over. She's short of breath and a little light-headed. His palms are hot and large cupping her cheeks. With a milky gaze, she stares and crawls up to him. With opened mouths, they kiss and she laps at his teeth and the slight concave of his pink tongue. She inhales his exhale.</p>
<p>Come back with me, he seems to say in the motion, I was lonely without you.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Reina watches the arena's lights bounce from her legs, her skin sprinkled with body glitter. The show's set to start in a little over an hour. She imagines there are already fans waiting outside.</p>
<p>The band walks about on the stage for rehearsal. Robert's voice comes and goes, singing and waning through the amplifiers as he turns to the others for direction. She's already said her apologies to them. Robert poked fun at her, ogling, before offering rings and bracelets to complete her look. Jonesy only shook his head and asked if she wanted him to help her with her bags when they left. Bonzo was drunk when she came to him and had enough sense to bury his face in her shoulder and exude about her fantastic scent.</p>
<p>The crew did not care when she told them, although Richard Cole, ever-present, snickered and admonished her for her bad behavior. The majority of the girls had nothing to say to her face, but she could tell by their slanted hips and sucked in cheeks that she was not welcome back.</p>
<p>Robert's bangles shake on her arm when Reina stands suddenly from the audience seat. From backstage, Peter lumbers to the front of the stage and places his hands on his hips. Her belly stings at the sight of him and the remembrance of her outburst. </p>
<p>His fat cigar wafts smoke. Through it, he shouts out a few words in his tinged accent and congratulates Jimmy.</p>
<p>"For what?" Jimmy plays mildly with his guitar strings. The notes ring out high over Reina's head. She watches their exchange like an animal in a zoo.</p>
<p>Peter laughs and turns to look at her. "You got her under control, James. Good job."</p>
<p>Robert chuckles from the stage in his voice half-thick. He leans away, curls and flouncy shirt swaying.</p>
<p>"Don't you have some poor venue owner to yell at?" Reina asks, crossing her arms. Peter is tall and huge, but so is her ego after blowing Jimmy. The manager watches, eyes beady as she slumps back down in her chair. </p>
<p>His tongue crosses over his teeth and she imagines him chopping on his cigar like a Saturday morning cartoon character. </p>
<p>"Now, where's all this coming from? Whose balls d'you steal?" He puffs and saunters away before she can devise the right comeback. </p>
<p>Rehearsal resumes and she tries to let her mind swell with the moment, with the band's shared laughter. When they finally walk off to dress and primp, she follows Jimmy's patent leather shoes into his dressing room. They haven't spoken since the hotel. She eyes his pillbox with some blocking hunger. </p>
<p>While he eases on his little bolero, she messes with his things on the vanity. </p>
<p>"Can I take one of these?"</p>
<p>"One of what?" </p>
<p>She very suddenly wants his voice telling her stories. </p>
<p>"These white pills."</p>
<p>"They're Quaaludes," he says. He appears behind her and reaches over to open the box. Delicate fingers take one up and his veins flex from the motion. "Here," he offers. She stares.</p>
<p>Finally, she lifts it from his hold and swallows it. She wants to get high with him; she can't remember their last time tripping together.</p>
<p>"Stay back here," Jimmy orders, "in the dressing room. You've never taken these before."</p>
<p>At first, she wants to challenge him, but then recalls their conversation in his suite. She nods, complacent, and lets him take her spot in the mirror. He bothers with his curls until they curve and frame his pale face. They're shorter than she remembers them being, glossy, full, smelling like flowery hair product. She sucks in a breath when he calls her over from across the room. She's grown anxious waiting for the sedative to bring her down.</p>
<p>"Come see," he offers and leans away from the vanity. He looks young standing there with his thin body and pretty clothes. "Undo the buttons on my pants."</p>
<p>Reina holds his hips to pull the fine pieces of fabric apart and finds him naked underneath.</p>
<p>"Happy?" He asks. A little sarcastic mirth lifts his brows.</p>
<p>It's a silly, stupid question. After Jeff, after Jimmy's heavy yield to her and their shrouded, bitter lust for one another, how can she be happy?</p>
<p>She nods her head and buttons him up.</p>
<p>He leaves her by herself in the room, just as the drug settles in her bloodstream and she hovers weighty from the closet to the single chair. Her limbs struggle to lift again; their sparkle intoxicates like champagne. Bonzo was right, she thinks, she does smell good. She smells like a rich woman and as she struggles to remember where she found the perfume, her mind grows tired.</p>
<hr/>
<p>"You were sleeping, I didn't want to bother you."</p>
<p>Jimmy and Reina are in the back of a car. She is slumped over him like a doll while he talks, voice flush. She doesn't remember how she got in the car or how she ended up on top of him. Despite everything, their closeness carries discomfort with it.</p>
<p>"Oh, I'm sorry . . ." she mumbles at the forgotten act of their ten-minute sex.</p>
<p>A slight noise blossoms in his throat. He moves and faces her. "I'm still upset with you."</p>
<p>She knows. She doesn't need to be reminded, especially when her head is lazy.</p>
<p>"Did you carry me to the car?" Her eyes finally open; the night is slithering past them.</p>
<p>"Bonzo did." He creeps back into silence and Reina wonders what he's thinking, what his green eyes are hiding under their lids.</p>
<p>The ride is short and when the two of them return to Jimmy's room, she toddles to the sofa. He pours himself a drink and one for her, dark wine.</p>
<p>They drink beside each other in the dim light. She's drunk getting drunker. Her body is limp and her hands wait for him to fill her glass up once more. She imagines that someone looking in would see them: glittered musician and glittered girl. She's hot and sweaty. She wants her picture taken.</p>
<p>"Jimmy. . . I don't want to leave you."</p>
<p>Their knees touch. Her fingers look strange through the wine glass.</p>
<p>His lisp rings across the room. "But you're back now, Reina."</p>
<p>Neither of them speaks until she opens her mouth again:</p>
<p>"I love you."</p>
<p>A beat: her heart or some silent music.</p>
<p>Reina doesn't wait. She leaves her wine glass on the coffee table and stumbles to his bedroom. He hasn't stayed long enough for it to smell like him. She finds a shirt discarded on top the nightstand, soft cotton, and grabs it before sliding under the sheets. She can't figure out if she's tired or not, her nose buried in his clothing, but she gives Jimmy the option of making up his mind.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0026"><h2>26. Moving in Blue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Reina breaks the yolk's filmy layer. It spills, thick yellow and slightly gelatinous across the fried white egg. She dabs the mess with her toast and studies the rained-clogged streets of Buffalo.</p>
<p>". . . but fuck if I didn't get my share. Who did he think he was? Lowlife prick with no job." Richard carries on a conversation seemingly with himself in the seat opposite her. He jabs fries into his mouth. Jimmy beside him eats slow, picking at his food. Robert draws a lotus flower on a napkin next to her, his body bored and lazy.</p>
<p>Another day and another show. Robert's fingers thrum across the table and he grins when Bonzo stops by to show off a freshly-rolled joint. He leaves the table. Richard's speech falters. Reina's eyes could roll to the back of her head, in some limbo, hungry for bliss. Her hands clench the edge of the table.</p>
<p>"What about it, dear?" Richard sparks suddenly. Her gaze flashes to him.</p>
<p>"I need to use the toilet."</p>
<p>"What the fuck?" He shouts and watches her get up. A couple of the patrons turn back to stare at him. Jimmy looks up as she leaves.</p>
<p>Last night left her with a temple headache and a churning in her gut. Jimmy was sleep-drunk and borrowed in the morning. She had to help him pack. He didn't speak much to her when they boarded the plane; their conversation, light and necessary, didn't even venture to her confession.</p>
<p>That relieving of her sin, her truth white and real. Real. A thunderclap shudders outside the diner to remind her.</p>
<p>From her pocket, she fishes a dime and enters the payphone booth. The phone book lies open and she flicks through to find exactly what she's looking for. Reina hurries to swish in the phone number on the rotary.</p>
<p>The line rings then picks up. An elderly woman answers and Reina gingerly begins.</p>
<p>"Hello, ma'am. Is this . . . Miss Nocturne?"</p>
<p>"I go by Jenny on the phone. Are you looking to schedule an appointment?"</p>
<p>Reina idles. "Are walk-ins alright?" Today? In a few minutes?"</p>
<p>"Hmm, let's see." There's rustling on the other end. "Yes, that's fine, I'm not booked until this afternoon. May I take your name?"</p>
<p>"Oh, it's Reina."</p>
<p>"Last name?"</p>
<p>"Just Reina, please."</p>
<p>The woman makes a tutting sound and sighs. "Alright. I'll set up the back room."</p>
<p>"Thank you — "</p>
<p>The call ends and Reina stares at the receiver before replacing it and slipping from the phone booth. On the table are her half-eaten egg and near-burnt hash browns.</p>
<p>"For you, Ricardo." She points to her food as if he's a dog and picks up the pocketbook she purchased at the airport.</p>
<p>The two men grab her with their eyes.</p>
<p>"Where are you going?" Jimmy asks this time. His fork clinks against his plate. Her lips twist at the sight of him and what those green eyes represent.</p>
<p>"To see someone."</p>
<p>He stands, to her surprise, and rummages for change in his wallet.</p>
<p>"You too now? What 'm getting paid for if it's not parenting the both of ya." Richard sighs and shakes his head.</p>
<p>Jimmy tosses a crumpled bill down on the table. "Take us," he suggests. Then, "Where is it, Reina?"</p>
<p>"A couple blocks from here." There's quiet. The blue tile floor seems to groan and stretch with the weight of time. Reina pushes her heels into the ground; she has to force her body to stay and wait. Finally, Richard gets up and leaves with them, his keys clinking and his groans loud.</p>
<p>Humid weight hangs from the tall, brick buildings, laughing and moaning from the window sills, drifting down to press on Reina's shoulders. It makes her question herself and leaves her staring at the folds of Jimmy's shirt to find answers.</p>
<p>In the backseat of Richard's car, she gives him directions. A single turn and a few streets bring them to the psychic shop. Jimmy laughs as he reads the sign. Richard mutters about how they're just alike — Reina drifts at the mention — and shuts off the car. She gives Jimmy her hand and they walk into the building together, as if this is how they were always meant to move, in tandem.</p>
<p>Inside, the walls are dark and Victorian, with gaudy patterning. Sparse light comes from a fake oil lamp and at the center of the scene is the Miss Nocturne Reina's been looking for. She's most likely in her sixties, with gray hair pulled high and wide and adorned with feathers. She matches the purple wallpaper and smacks her lined lips when she sees the two standing at the entrance.</p>
<p>"Reina," she announces and stands. Her long gown flows and brushes when she appears from behind the small table. "And your friend . . . it costs extra, you know."</p>
<p>"That's fine," Reina mumbles and stares up at Jimmy. He gives her something mopey in return as if he's only half-conscious. The woman's footsteps recede and they follow her into the back room. It's even more extravagant than before, with the ceiling covered in astrological zodiacs and the walls rich with exotic fabrics.</p>
<p>The woman is turned from them. Her throat clears. "What will it be?"</p>
<p>Jimmy catches the conversation before Reina can and sits down at another small, round table. He runs his hand across the woven cloth, rich with gold thread. "Two palm readings. Please."</p>
<p>Reina takes a chair from the corner and joins him. She remembers his story about the moment after he left The Yardbirds, as everything unwound and he found himself visiting a palm reader. A confirmation of his direction, some big storm about to rage on.</p>
<p>She swallows and tosses her fates in the air before the psychic sits across from them.</p>
<p>"Who's first?"</p>
<p>A pale wrist offered up as if for sacrifice and his right hand outstretched in front of him. Jimmy's unfocused bravery.</p>
<p>Miss Nocturne grabs her glasses and Jimmy's hand. She touches him and Reina wishes and watches with jealousy.</p>
<p>"Is this your dominant hand?" Her tone is whispery. A musky candle smokes in the room.</p>
<p>"Yes," Jimmy says.</p>
<p>She traces a wrinkly finger along one of the lines that stretches down his hand. She hums. "You're successful, rich at a young age. And you're seen as an idol to others. But still. . ." She gestures for his other hand. "You're hiding something. You have a habit of holding your true feelings back."</p>
<p>Reina watches their interaction and files through the points Miss Nocturne makes of Jimmy's character. She understands all this. He needs someone in garb to tell him they see him. She grips her thighs and waits for her own turn.</p>
<p>When it comes, after Jimmy casts her an expression like a man awakened, she gives the woman her two hands to have.</p>
<p>She starts, "Well I can see you're impatient." Reina's cheeks glow and she hears a laugh from Jimmy. "And you are because you missed an opportunity. You gave it up. You feel that if you don't grab what you can now, it will be gone forever. You're young, but you feel old as if your life is ending and you're left with regrets. You're hiding too."</p>
<p>The reading leaves Reina contemplative, her hands drop to her lap. She turns to look at Jimmy when the woman excuses herself.</p>
<p>"What did you think about that?"</p>
<p>"How our palms can show so much?" Jimmy suggests. She can't shake her feeling about him. He's stoned or drunk, half-there. She wants to reach in and fix him.</p>
<p>"Yeah, but what she said. About you hiding. Do you think you do that?"</p>
<p>"Well, you do it too. . ."</p>
<p>"Jim." She reaches. Takes the fruit and splits its tender skin. "Do you remember what I told you last night?"</p>
<p>For a moment, he's still. The psychic returns with their bill and Reina takes her Plumpton money from her pocketbook.</p>
<p>"Thank you," she tells her as she rises. "You've really opened my eyes."</p>
<p>The woman sits counting the bills. "Yeah."</p>
<p>Outside, Richard is waiting, and Reina feels like the food in her stomach might come up her throat.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Little talk until the sun sets and the band is on stage. Reina lounges in the dressing room, feasting on donuts and sweets and listening to faded noise. She can picture Jimmy from here, imagining him getting all loose with the applause and the tone of his guitar. At the start of the tour, she'd watch his face and the way his eyes shut, how his mouth opened during solos. Such sweet, open expressions, she thinks while dabbing loose sprinkles with a wet finger from her paper plate.</p>
<p>The world passes her by. With her focus on Jimmy, nothing else is available. Startled, she rattles from her position across the sofa and moves back out to the stage. They're in the middle of a number, 'No Quarter,' and John Paul is playing sparkling tones that ring through the arena like stars. Her eyes search and she finds Jimmy finally, dripping and knocking back a paper cup on the sidelines. Robert's next to him. They chat, so close they speak into one another's ear.</p>
<p>Reina steps over to them as they break and Robert scoops her up. Strange intimacy, she thinks, as she floats in his big arms. And then it's Jimmy's turn to have her, holding her close. She swims in their twin scents and the warbling from Jonesy's keys.</p>
<p>"Hello, sweet. Are you from the audience?" Robert asks as Jimmy rubs his hands up and down her back. He feels so good to have.</p>
<p>"It's Reina."</p>
<p>"Oh!" Robert laughs. "I can't see right in the dark."</p>
<p>Jimmy's grip squeezes her sides and then her ass and she buries her surprise in his neck. Maybe he still thinks she's some girl from the crowd.</p>
<p>"Come back with me," he tells her in her ear. He sways slightly with her — an almost-dance.</p>
<p>"Where? Backstage right now?"</p>
<p>"Yes. To my hotel room too. In my arms."</p>
<p>She takes off with him and Robert follows, eager to see who's waiting for him. They part and it's just them alone in a single room. Reina faces Jimmy as he blocks the door. Tall and slender with wet hair that's lost its volume. His white suit shimmers and the black shirt beneath peeks from the jacket like a tease.</p>
<p>"Let me tell you," he starts and she wanders near him like a moth to light. Damp hands clench her arms; she loves it. "You're remarkable. A good girl. Look how you came back to me after what you did." He kisses her cheek. Her body turns embarrassed and jellied.</p>
<p>"I came back because I can't be without you. All I ever wanted was to be with you."</p>
<p>"Always?" His lips latch to her neck and suck at a spot that makes her sigh.</p>
<p>"Always. You're my schoolgirl crush," she exudes.</p>
<p>"You came to find me at the Rainbow."</p>
<p>"I'd been there a couple days. I timed it wrong. I didn't know when you'd arrive, but then, that night I saw you walking in and I took my chance." Her hands grip his curls and track along his chest. "You're how I thought you'd be."</p>
<p>He's forming purple spots on her neck. Her breath catches as if he's trying to pull it through her skin.</p>
<p>"Really?" He asks.</p>
<p>"Yes . . ." the word dissolves into the air.</p>
<p>"There's still much you don't know."</p>
<p>"Then tell me."</p>
<p>"I can't," he says to her hair. "And what about your secrets?"</p>
<p>"I've told you everything." But that's a lie. Her wishes for marriage and dark-haired children sit under her tongue. It's selfish. Those are only desires women have.</p>
<p>Breaking the silence and their embrace are footsteps thudding down the hall. "Pagey, we're on!" It's Robert's voice. It carries and echoes like his music.</p>
<p>Jimmy comes out of the room after her. "Be out there with me. I want to look at you while I play."</p>
<p>She's with him.</p>
<p>Later in the hotel room, he ties her up and they make love. He describes a book he's looking to buy in the next city. She breathes him in, unable to get enough of laying with him and talking into the late hours of the night.</p>
<p>Morning rises and they catch the plane to Seattle. It's how it was before Plumpton, a fresh start, and she pours him his first drink of the day to keep him steady on the flight. On the sofa, her hands brush his hair from his forehead and she looks into his green eyes. She tries to mix her soul with his.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0027"><h2>27. Contemplation at Midday</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"So, how is it?" Richard and Reina are alone for the first time in his car. They sit parked outside of a little store in downtown Pittsburgh and watch the light peek from the clouded sky. A beam of light casts across Reina's tan arm. She licks her lips and finds a sweet cherry taste: her roll-on Kissing Potion that Jimmy bought in Philly.</p>
<p>She's had a week to mull it over. A week spent completely involved with him.</p>
<p>He brought her back to their daily mystic lessons, mornings spent in bed and evenings getting drunk. They danced on the Starship, hips together, then waltzing, then do-si-do. The white bedroom became their hiding place where they shared secrets: you never told me you jumped hurdles in school as she traced her hands over his shins, curling around his knees - her small expression of power before teasing him into climax. And then it was his turn to get to her: getting chased by the police for trespassing on a hotel pool? Naughty girl. Laughter, like a forgotten rhythm. Unspokenly fine. Unspokenly normal.</p>
<p>She finally decides on an answer for Richard. "I'm unsure." She waits a moment and sees him turn around to look at her. "Especially since it's almost over."</p>
<p>Madison Square Garden looms in her mind. Or more urgently, the end of the tour and Jimmy's return to England.</p>
<p>Before Richard can knock any witty comments her way, Jimmy returns with a bundle of newspaper. Reina leans forward to figure out what he's working to unwrap. Carefully, silently, he pulls out a little ceramic swan and offers it towards the backseat.</p>
<p>"Oh." Reina realizes it's for her; she takes it in her palms and stares at Jimmy. He's smiling and waiting. "Thank you," she mumbles.</p>
<p>He blinks at her, and as Cole pulls from the parking lot to bring them to the airport, he uncovers something else. Another book for his wide collection and a slim print of an etching. Reina watches. He shows them to her in his same quiet pattern. She wonders if he's forgiven her, or just content to pretend. His fingers trace over the cover.</p>
<p>Maybe he was drawn to the words of the palm reader. Maybe he's changed his mind. She's too afraid to ask, even though his voice is soft as it wavers in explanation of the century-old novel.</p>
<p>She loves him and it leaves her famished.</p>
<p>Together, they move through the airport as the morning sun dwindles behind the clouds.</p>
<p>Jimmy finally asks her, "Are you excited?"</p>
<p>"About New York?"</p>
<p>"Mmm-hmm."</p>
<p>He climbs the steps before her and gets caught up in conversation with his mates, roadies, managers. He moves in green silk, like a prince. His hands touch. He gives each of them his attention and passes on. </p>
<p>Reina holds the swan in her grasp, fiddling with it before settling on one of the plush seats in front of the piano. The swan's neck is so thin she could crack it between two fingers and the hand-painted sheen is delicate, gray lines implying the texture of feathers. </p>
<p>"Good," Jimmy tells her as he walks past and leans down to offer her the fresh beer in his hands. Cold and hearty. She takes communal swigs from it. There's noise bursting around them in laughter and singing. But she follows him with her gaze to the other couch and finds him immediately bombarded and stolen.</p>
<p>Not long after, the pilot announces they'll be leaving the airport. She shuts her eyes and tries to think.</p>
<p>Her mind's muddled. It wants desperately to stay in the knowledge of today. The plane rattles and then settles in elevation. Jimmy calls her and when she separates, she finds him staring. His hand pats his lap and she responds. All he has to do is beckon. It's a short walk across the aisle, but her feet drag. She likes to see him shadowed and unbuttoned. She likes how his smile is small and for her.</p>
<p>Suddenly, Robert's dancing back bumps into her and the swan spills like thrown water. It crashes to the carpet and smashes into eggshell pieces.</p>
<p>"Oh, goodness," she hears Robert say behind her. "I'm sorry, Reina."</p>
<p>She can't even think about spluttering a reply. Her face is red and she hides it quickly by bending and plucking up the pieces scattered around Jimmy's feet.</p>
<p>"Don't. It's alright," he tells her, his own hands joining hers. A sliver of ceramic pricks her fingertip and she starts to bleed. It makes a small noise leave her mouth in surprise, but she doesn't stop. The head lies intact; she mourns for it in the center of her palm.</p>
<p>That's when Jimmy's fingers slip around her wrist and he pulls her up. They go into the bathroom. Each moment with him seems to have happened before, whether during their time together or some years ago, as different people.</p>
<p>"Reina . . ." he says and dips her hand under the faucet to wash the dripping blood off. "What is it?" His thumb brushes over and over her pointer finger in a trance. She's lulling, with the alcohol and Jimmy's touch.</p>
<p>"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to break it."</p>
<p>He lets her dry herself and they stand in the small bathroom facing one another. From the corner of her eye, she can see their reflections in the mirror. In front of her, Jimmy clenches his jaw.</p>
<p>"This whole day you've been off. What is it?"</p>
<p>She debates herself and the slope of his frame. "I'm afraid."</p>
<p>"Of me?"</p>
<p>She's surprised to hear him so blatant. His dark eyes wait and hold nothing.</p>
<p>"Of time, I think."</p>
<p>He hums and trails his palm down his thigh. "It's our worst enemy."</p>
<p>"Us?" Reina follows his legs.</p>
<p>"People. We're afraid of getting old. Of losing things." He starts to leave the tiny bathroom. "Come sit with me."</p>
<p>She wonders if things could have gone differently. Maybe if she hadn't slipped into Jeff's bed. Her tongue traces her teeth.</p>
<p>Back with everyone, she tries to smile. Someone cleaned up the mess and she gets a bandage to cover her cut. It reminds her of falling on the playground in primary school and scraping her knee. One of the stewardesses offers her water with a smile. Reina smiles back with a warmth she struggles to find.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Peter Grant says everyone must leave the plane before the boys, so they can be photographed and filmed disembarking. He's on a tightrope, his directions loud and demanding.</p>
<p>"Everything has to be right," he shouts when Reina and the other girls make their way across the tarmac. The afternoon sun splits their progression, showing past them like backlighting.</p>
<p>A man catches her attention and she drifts towards him, wary. He's holding a camera.</p>
<p>"Do you remember me?" He asks.</p>
<p>Her mouth opens, no words, but he waves the pause away.</p>
<p>"You were there at Jimmy's house when I came to see him."</p>
<p>"Right. You're the director. Well," she scans the airport and notices the band beginning the descent to the runway. "Good luck."</p>
<p>He tosses a shake of his head her way and moves forward to capture the men.</p>
<p>She stands back with everyone else. It's like a movie, the way Jimmy saunters down and the boys spill out into a group talking with each other. Every part of it is documented, with Peter lumbering behind. Reina fiddles with the collar of her shirt.</p>
<p>From her spot, Jimmy looks holy. The sun halos and he leans into the motion. Arousal, in surprise, hits her and she looks at the pavement.</p>
<p>"Oh damn, just watch the way Robert walks," a woman beside her says. She wiggles in her jeans. Reina lifts her eyes to see them wander toward the wing of the plane.</p>
<p>"It's all part of the show. Look how they stand. Like gods." Another voice.</p>
<p>Then a chorus in agreement. With hands on hips and arms outstretched, the band gets immortalized in film. Their hair blows in the wind. Jimmy's all buttoned-up and smoldered. Robert is beckoning the camera as his mistress, teasing. Bonham looks like he couldn't care to be there, his motives unsure. And Jonesy fills the end, bare-chested like Robert, pinning power.</p>
<p>When they finally drop their poses and weave to the waiting cars, Reina makes her move to sidle up to Jimmy.</p>
<p>"I love the way you look."</p>
<p>"Really?" He stands up taller. His eyes graze her hips before his arm dangles around her waist.</p>
<p>"Like you could do anything."</p>
<p>"Don't tease me, Reina," he holds the door open for her. The hot interior breathes out like a yawn.</p>
<p>She stops him and addresses his face. She knows it so well, by touch and sight. Again, her mind ponders the future, but she takes in as much of now as she can. His eyes are flecked a hazel color and his skin is warm under her palm. His hair is soft, washed, bouncy. The smell of barley lies on him like perfume. In other circumstances, she would tell him again that she loves him.</p>
<p>Instead, she pats his back and summarizes: "I can't wait to see you in front of all those people.</p>
<p>"I know. I'll be thinking of you."</p>
<p>That carries her into the car, where she's left to sit with guitar techs and roadies.</p>
<p>Through the window, Jimmy smiles. The sky blushes pink and he turns to it, leaving as if to paint it into night.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0028"><h2>28. Watching the Sky</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Reina could sip him like brandy, so much that it would wobble in her belly when she walked. His image shakes and shines: moon, stars, ruling planet Saturn. He's tinsel and glitter. She's caught between his guitar strings like a saved cigarette.</p>
<p>Alone, she watches. There's noise, a thousand bees, coming from the stage and the crowd, but this seems her own personal show. Even the crouching cameramen can't convince her otherwise. She tucks her hair behind her ears and claps along. So much heat she's beginning to sweat in the pool of her collarbone. And this is only the first night.</p>
<p>Sometime between songs, she abandoned her shoes and sat drinking on a little fold-out chair. Richard came to shout at her. He said he wanted to apologize for the tour. He just gets so caught up with it all, he drones on.</p>
<p>"And not to mention the drugs . . . speaking of," he reaches into his pocket for a cocaine baggie. "Care for some?"</p>
<p>She leans forward and recalls the pool party. It seems so long ago now, years before. Richard slices the powder up with a credit card across the side of the stage and rolls a dollar bill tight. He lets Reina hit a line first. She heaves it back and watches him do the same.</p>
<p>"Good," he says. "Makes you feel how they all feel. Imagine you're a man. Imagine how just showing up and shaking your hips makes women fall all over you."</p>
<p>Reina shakes her head. She's contemplating another line. "It's more than that. It's the idea. Their ideas."</p>
<p>"Ah, so that's what you think of Pagey? All his ideas rolling around in his brain? No wonder he's kept you around so long, you get him off."</p>
<p>Her blood and nerves are on fire, in the best possible way. She faces the noise and stares up. As if he felt her, Jimmy turns. Drooped eyes and pout. Bonzo hits a timed beat and Jimmy's leg raises with the sound. He purses his lips. He tilts up the guitar's neck and takes a step forward.</p>
<p>In his spotlight halo, he's dripping. She reaches out her arms. Robert's voice lowers and Jimmy's body follows suit until his back is bent and he's playing directly to Reina.</p>
<p>She takes him in. No words. No movement. He stares severely with that delicate face.</p>
<p>"Get the fuck back over there!"</p>
<p>She shakes back into herself at the sound of Peter's voice. Jimmy yells something in defense, something she can't hear, and moves into the hot exposure of the lights. Richard gives a chortling laugh behind her.</p>
<p>The show crescendos as they reach the final song. Her veins are already red hot. She doesn't surprise herself when she takes Jimmy's arm and wrestles him backstage. Different in the light, exposed, he careens along with a dry laugh in his throat.</p>
<p>She pulls them both to the wall and he stares, high and surprised. He's full of color like a spring field.</p>
<p>"My dear," Jimmy exudes. His heart is thudding faster than anything she knows. He holds her as she holds him: adrenaline to adrenaline, blood to blood. He shakes his head. "You can't have me."</p>
<p>Her mind is a peach pit, dark, bitter, prickled where there was once fruit. "I can't have you?" There's a place for him, more tours, more drugs, more women who are prettier and livelier. It hits her suddenly, her mother's backhanded slaps, to hear him say it. As if someone is wrenching the sweat from her skin and wringing her dry. But the snow is already in her bloodstream; her tears don't come.</p>
<p>"An encore, Reina." His thumbnail lingers near her chin's point. He takes his hands away and unsticks their bodies. With a smile, he shows all his teeth, and parts when Robert calls for him.</p>
<p>Reina unrolls, long-legged, jam preserves in a jar, and presses her hands to her hot cheeks. She could go dancing.</p>
<hr/>
<p>After the two shows, it's the same, Reina gets her lover in bed, with the intentions of a cat with a bird. Her only time alone with Jimmy and it's a storm. She daubs her coke and perfume. He stretches, wet and exerted at her feet, and they see each other. It's how she wanted him to be and she's sure he feasts on her image, strained and knot-twisted.</p>
<p>The final night is hard-edged as she sits cross-legged on Jimmy's bed and listens to the yelling outside. They're going to be late, she thinks. Peter Grant begins his usual tirade. But this time it's not as simple as bootleggers and groupies. Someone stole the money from the safety deposit box downstairs. So much cash she wouldn't know what to do with it herself. She traces her lips with her fingers. The noise dies down and she stands when Jimmy reenters. </p>
<p>"Is everything alright?" She questions. There are eggshells beneath her feet. Jimmy's worry would plague her. </p>
<p>He sighs, a sound like wind, and shakes his head. "I know you heard. They'll start an investigation and question us all. It's just what we fucking need right now."</p>
<p>She could lounge over him, play the needy housewife, wipe his brow, and tell him everything will be alright. But she worries herself about being suspected. "Are there cars waiting downstairs?"</p>
<p>He paces then stops before the door. "We should go."</p>
<p>No one knows yet save the band and crew. The lobby is empty of all but guests and hotel staff. Quickly, they enter the cars and drive off as the sun sets in a purple sky.</p>
<p>There's no time for circles and discussion. Jimmy dresses, looks at her briefly, and leaves to climb the stage. </p>
<p>Reina's heart throbs from her three-day spot. Her legs are bare, her hot pants short and her hair curled to kiss the glitter on her shoulders. She's expecting Richard, as she did the day before and the day before that, but he doesn't come. He was the one who handled all the money. She found it out at the beginning: bags and lockboxes stuffed with cash. All the people surrounding the band, new faces each show, she's sure someone could have slipped in and out with bad intentions. </p>
<p>Her nerves are edgy with a desire for cocaine. She doesn't want to think too much. The band sounds good, despite the night, but she moves into the bright lights of the backstage labyrinth to search for the coke lady. </p>
<p>Neither American nor English, her accent seems a faraway thing. She's thin and birdy. Reina finds her easily, sniffing from the little powder tin. A tiny spoon, a cognac bottle. Some fairytale blow godmother. </p>
<p>"Strange things," the woman tells her as she supplies the drug. "They're all on edge. The manager won't even let them take a hit. Only you girls. And you all already smell like flowers." Her long, straight hair brushes Reina's arm. Her blue eyes pick. </p>
<p>From what Richard told her, this woman is the type Jimmy likes. It made Reina feel revealed as if she instead was some scheming witch playing an illusion. She looks at the lights of the ceiling until they are imprinted, prism lines in her vision. </p>
<p>Uneasy and restless, she crawls back out and climbs the tall stage. The guitar techs crowd, watching from behind the amplifiers. She imagines they'll turn out as blurred, shrouded faces in the film. But the band themselves will be clear, real as the swish of Jimmy's pant leg across the stage floor. She watches his back, his arm's bend</p>
<p>His playing is like his love-making. He tests the guitar like he tests Reina. Here's a touch. How does that feel? Let me hear it. But he knows his Gibson so much better than Reina. There's no time for hesitation. He pulls and it moans. He moves in knowing. His body is tight with held breaths.</p>
<p>The floor beneath her rumbles from the vibrations: Robert's stepping across the stage and the pulse of Bonzo's kick drum. It enters her and dances with the swell of her blood.</p>
<p>Time skips as she swallows and pans during her high. One of the men offers her a beer. She takes it. He tries to talk to her, but she only looks away and gives him a dumb smile. </p>
<p>Soon, they're standing, drawing off the stage to shouts and praises. Jimmy first. She leans away from the speaker cases and follows him. </p>
<p>Peter's already there. "That was good," he rambles. "It will look good. Listen, those cop cunts already know about this. They're back at the hotel with Cole. And if I find out that little fucker did anything —"</p>
<p>"I know, G," Jimmy gasps. "Let me have this first." </p>
<p>Peter stops against the wall, words waiting on his tongue. Reina ducks her head as she passes him. The band is flooded as they start towards the cars. In and out. People crowd them. They make it impossible to get near Jimmy. He turns for a moment, as someone near her in the sea of followers calls his name. A broad smile is on his face. His happiness is radiant. He sweeps into a car, and as quickly as she can without running, she ducks in with him. </p>
<p>Her wide eyes stare into him and he looks back. A game of chicken: who will give in first?</p>
<p>She does, touching his tight inner thigh and dragging toward him. His mouth accepts her kiss with knuckles poised beneath her chin. Reina hovers in her knowledge. She can fix each pain in him. </p>
<p>Jimmy slides the partition up before the driver enters. The raw spoil of the engine ripples the air. </p>
<p>They're back in the dark city. </p>
<p>The whole of him is with her. His stench and his breath. As they kiss, his saliva tastes like citrus. She leans on the curve of his knee, trails feeling down his pale chest, nibbles at the tender column of his throat. Where New York flows past, it's all him to her. The skyscrapers and moonlit streets, the hidden coffee shops and barefoot fire escapes. </p>
<p>They walk out together, to the lobby, but Peter gesticulates at the doors, stopping them before they can enter. </p>
<p>Reina looks at the men around her. They look so old. Wearied, lined compared to the men who stood outside the Starship. She clutches Jimmy's arm. They can go home together. She'll make him happy. </p>
<p>As Peter described, there are kids crowded inside the lobby. They shove each other for pictures and autographs. A few get them, but one boy is knocked back by Peter. Reina watches his camera crash to the floor. She makes eye contact with him and turns away to find the elevator. </p>
<p>Seventeen floors up and away. Peter sentences them all to a night in. Reina welcomes it. She made the bed before they left for the show and droops upon it, a queen about to receive her fed grapes. Quiet wraps around the suite. It sifts through the rooms. It hovers Jimmy, hands with champagne glasses, like smoke. </p>
<p>Like nights before, he sits beside her and drinks. She prefers to do it together so that their heads cloud in tandem. A mirror breaking, Jimmy coughs.</p>
<p>Her eyes raise to him from her feet. His Adam's apple bobs in his throat. </p>
<p>"I think it's time I tell you my secrets."</p>
<p>"What secrets? I don't care if you have things to hide. You've hidden them long enough. It doesn't matter."</p>
<p>With that, he bares his skin. No more roses and constellations. She wishes she could bury herself in his ribs' indentations. She asks herself why she said anything at all. Maybe because her heart feels as if it could explode any minute. </p>
<p>A body too mild for any more uppers. Her hand shakes when she reaches behind her to touch him and speak.</p>
<p>"I like you this way." </p>
<p>Reina watches his lips for those words: then come home with me. His tongue traces his mouth. He calls her up, to kneel over his face as she clutches the headboard. She doesn't want to break the spell by showing her surprise. She leaves her clothes on the floor and turns to him. </p>
<p>Her tummy flutters. Rising up and giving herself away, her knees wrinkle the pillow under his head. His palms curve the back of her thighs. He makes Reina huff sweet into the wall.</p>
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<a name="section0029"><h2>29. Rethinking the Time</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Peter says we have to stay inside . . . like toddlers. </em>
</p>
<p>Reina retrieves her hand from the door and presses her ear to it. </p>
<p>There's nothing. Only the muffled patter of shower water gives any sign of life. </p>
<p>She leans away and settles on the plush carpet. On the side table beside the sofa is a lone cigarette, rolled by Robert. She looks toward the bathroom and its closed door and eases the little stick between her fingers. In the drawer is a box of matches. With the cigarette between her lips and the match held close, she strikes a few times before getting a light. It huffs and sizzles as it burns. She shakes it dead and leaves it discarded in the metal ashtray. </p>
<p>Her back reclines to the front of the sofa, and with legs crossed and hair pulled back in a scarf, she smokes hearty. Reina tries the morning paper, where plastered across the front page is news of the theft. She skips to the funnies. Garfield's round face gives her side-eye.</p>
<p>"Hurry up. I tried to leave some hot water for you," Jimmy says, coming out of the bedroom. He struggles with the knotted towel at his waist. </p>
<p>Reina stands immediately, untying herself and throwing the newspaper on the sofa. She reaches over to drop the cigarette in the ashtray when Jimmy's damp hand wraps around her wrist. </p>
<p>"That was mine . . ." His face is soft, but his tone doesn't match. She licks her lips, tasting the wavering heat of nicotine, and nods. </p>
<p>"It was."</p>
<p>Unexpectedly, his face breaks into a smile. Jimmy laughs and Reina finds herself laughing along, a little shocked and dried.</p>
<p>"Look at you," he smirks. "Grown defiant. Hurry up and take your shower."</p>
<p>She drops the cigarette and stands, looking at him for a moment before turning and leaving. He walks like a hidden man as if she can't see the placement of his feet and the water-speckled round of his shoulder.</p>
<p>She loses her pattern of breath. When will she see that bareness again? Tonight? A month from now? Decades?</p>
<p>The bathroom steams, vapor coating the mirror and walls, rolling out from the shower curtain. </p>
<p>Reina folds her clothes so the sleeves of her t-shirt line up with one another. She loosens the scarf and her hair falls out in dark chocolate waves.</p>
<p>Aware of herself, she runs her hands over her body, feeling the curve of her hips and the inward slope of her waist. Ribs and skin. Water on her palm as she reaches out and the shower heat soothes. </p>
<p>She passes over the tub threshold for her meditative baptism.</p>
<p>She cleans herself with the soaps Jimmy used not long ago and dries off in the same air.</p>
<p>Caught, like she is on the tile floor, she's in a cage of time. Not there yet to the future and too far to be in the past. Reina realizes she hates the present. Especially this existence as the clock ticks her steps into the bedroom away and she wanders between a long white dress and a pair of tight jeans.</p>
<p>"What do you think would be better?" She asks Jimmy when he finds her. He's made tea; he sips it naked.</p>
<p>He tilts his head and points to the white smock. "It's holy. Reminds me of your being an angel in the church play."</p>
<p>Her smile buries into the light fabric as she drowns in it and emerges on the other side, fresh, smelling simple clean of the hotel shampoo.</p>
<p>The air conditioner billows. Below on the street, car horns scream, and a fire truck siren wails. Reina goes to the bedroom window. Jimmy's room is at the corner of the hotel and looks out onto a side street. People move past with goals, ideas, places to be. They get in taxis, they walk beside one another. So many different lives happening at the same time as hers. She turns back and looks at Jimmy. </p>
<p>He pulls his jacket over his shoulders. "Do you see anybody you know?"</p>
<p>She shakes her head, stares through the glass once more. Pulling her bottom lip between her teeth she asks him, "Are you worried about the money? Where it went? If you'll ever get it back?"</p>
<p>"Of course. I was trying not to think of it until you brought it up." The room becomes cold and dark as a cloud passes over the sun. "Peter should fire that alcoholic."</p>
<p>"Richard?"</p>
<p>"Yeah . . . he's so full of shit. Come on, Reina," Jimmy urges. "Your hair's dripping all over the place."</p>
<p>She'd like to be a film star, the more she contemplates it. Piling her hair atop her head and pinning it with a clip, she stalks out of the bedroom, past Jimmy, and slips on her shoes. In the reflection of the dark gray TV screen, she practices her smolder. </p>
<p>Of all the times she's spent looking at herself this one feels right. Her eyes glow back at her. She comes across a little younger with her hair up and her face clean. </p>
<p>"Can we read some?" She asks Jimmy. Then corrects herself. "Can you read to me?"</p>
<p>His footsteps near and when his image blurs in the reflection she gawks at him. The necklace from the previous shows glimmers between his fingers as he unhooks the chain and clasps it around his neck. He fluffs his hair and sits down on the couch, unfolding the newspaper. </p>
<p>She stands and leans into him, pulling her legs towards her, taking his warmth. </p>
<p>"'Taurus,'" he starts, "'August will not be your month. While the sun is in Leo you'll feel uncomfortable adjusting to new environments and scenarios. You'll have to take time for yourself and learn to relax. Your path might be rocky, but you know how to get to your end goal.'" Jimmy's green eyes fish up to hers. The revelation makes her chew the inside of her cheek. But she doesn't give in.</p>
<p>"Now yours." A finger pointed at the black printed words. Jimmy clears his throat.</p>
<p>"'Capricorn, you're moving too fast for others around you to catch up. Remember the people that surround you. Instead of shunning them away, open your arms. Who knows, maybe they'll have some great advice for you.'"</p>
<p>They share a look. Reina moves closer and enwraps him. Her fingers mess with his hair.</p>
<p>"What do you think?"</p>
<p>He shrugs.</p>
<p>Reina smiles and murmurs, "It should have said 'Capricorn, you're hard to please.'"</p>
<p>"Right. That would've been better."</p>
<p>She gets a grin out of him. Her blood flutters as it flows through her veins.</p>
<p>"More. . ."</p>
<p>"Reading?"</p>
<p>"Or just talk to me. Tell me something." She lingers her thumb over his temple. All this time is a feast, but she'll never be full.</p>
<p>His voice is as soft as the inside of rose petals. Light like a woman's. Slightly unsure.</p>
<p>Bron-Yr-Aur was beautiful, he says. All lush and green. The weather made him grow his hair out. And his beard. Every moment was physical, stepping through wet grass, harboring his guitar to his chest, watching the tiny fish in the creek where the water runs clear like glass. He spent his time in history.</p>
<p>"I'd love to go there," Reina says. There's fatigue in her voice and she can't block it out.</p>
<p>"Maybe you will someday."</p>
<p>Jimmy stands and just on cue, a knock on the door causes him to pull it open. The band's security management stands tall and bulky. He says he'll be escorting them to the cars. Jimmy invites him in to chat while Reina grabs her things. It's hard to think of this as the end. And she's yet to ask Jimmy what his plans for her are. She zips her bag up quickly and smooths out the bedsheets. In the doorway of the bedroom, she takes a last look. Either way it will go, she'll no longer have hotels to stay in. The first day has become the last.</p>
<p>Her hand wraps around the bedpost. Dull grey illuminates the room. Taking a breath and shutting her eyes, she reflects on the past months.</p>
<p>Loving someone for an ideal. Her renaissance man Jimmy, just as good as she thought he'd be. Just as bad.</p>
<p>They'd talked about what she did and whether or not he truly forgave her. It's fine. It's all fine. The attention she got from Jeff was too good. Spoiled and admired. Despite what Jimmy told her from the start, she wondered if he truly admired her. If she was not just <em>woman</em> to him.</p>
<p>He calls her name and she shuts the door, closes away those thoughts in a box. The big man in their hotel room beckons them to follow and even offers to carry Reina's things. At first, she resists, but Jimmy waves a hand and she lets the man have them.</p>
<p>The three of them move down the hall: the two men with the bags and Reina idle. She turns to see what she's leaving behind and finds Robert, with his own company, waving at her. He shouts her name. The group stops and waits for him and now all are trapped in the elevator.</p>
<p>Robert laughs and puts his hand to his face. "All this is such a hassle. Think about it. So much money. So much time. Fuck."</p>
<p>She's not sure how to respond. After all, it's not like they're hurting for income. She drops her head. Someone makes a joke and the elevator rattles with laughter. It carries down into the lobby, at least until they see Peter again.</p>
<p>She's ushered first into a car, swelling in the humidity as she watches men talk outside. They're very animated. Glad she's not outside to hear them, she sits back into the seat and tries to calm herself.</p>
<p>Right now, she'd rather have Jimmy with her, to keep her company and distract her from the worries crowding her head: lit cigarette and the burgeoning need for cocaine that simmers up into her throat, this weighty love she has inside, the start of another rainstorm.</p>
<p>Her hair's nearly dry by now. She unclips it and runs her fingers through the damp waves.</p>
<p>The car door opens and Robert slides in beside her. Jeaned and effortlessly presentable, he smells like weed and coconuts. If things were different, she would have smiled.</p>
<p>"Where's Jimmy?" She asks.</p>
<p>Robert gives her a look from the corner of his eyes and scoots over when the door opens again and Bonzo sits beside him. "I'm not good enough? He's with Peter. They've got plans to move forward without this missing money."</p>
<p>"This again?" John starts. "Jesus Christ, one of the little bitches probably took it."</p>
<p>Reina's face reddens. With the appearance of the driver, she's silent the rest of the way to the airport. Robert and John talk about their wives and children. Her time is wasted watching the world pass her by.</p>
<p>Outside JFK, the cars stop. She watches through the front window as Jimmy exits the limo in front and stretches. Not waiting for Robert and John to leave, she gets out and carries herself around to Jimmy. </p>
<p>He whispers her name and reaches out, touching her arm with his fingers. </p>
<p>" . . . so Cole will come back later. For now, though, we all just need to go home and relax." Peter folds himself in order to join them on the arrival platform. </p>
<p>"Yes." Jimmy merely responds. "Should we go inside?"</p>
<p>He starts the progression into the airport. It's as large and bustling as she remembers. Reina checks back for her luggage and finds one of the drivers has brought it directly to her. She thanks him with a shy smile and heaves it over her shoulder. They move to stand near the arrival gate, where people come down with their suitcases and business. </p>
<p>"Do you . . .  ?" She starts, but Jimmy picks up the question. His voice carries a serious tone, his mouth light and frown-dipped. He seems like a stranger.</p>
<p>"There are some things I need to tell you before I catch the plane to England. I wanted to tell you last night, but you stopped me. I wanted to tell you in June, but you were so happy. Reina," he catches her shoulder and she's forced to face him. He truly is the most wonderful man she's seen. Regal and fragile at once. His bottom lip disappears as he pulls it in and teethes it with worry. "Um, you should know that I —" </p>
<p>A little girl's shout stops him from speaking. "Papa!" She yells. With her curly blonde hair, Reina imagines she might be calling for Robert or even John or Jonesy. But it's Jimmy she toddles towards and it's Jimmy who pulls her up into his arms. </p>
<p>As if time stopped around her, Reina stares with wide eyes at Jimmy's daughter attached to him. She never would have thought. With his temperament and disdain. But he holds her tiny hands in his and gives her a kiss as she giggles. </p>
<p>"This is Scarlet, Reina," he introduces. "She's two." </p>
<p>She urges the corners of her mouth up. "Oh, hello, Scarlet. I like your dress."</p>
<p>As shy as him, Scarlet hides her face in his jacket. "What do you say?" Jimmy prods. His voice is colored gentle.</p>
<p>A muffled thank you filters to Reina and she gives a shuddered laugh in return. Her fingers work the cotton of her skirt, pulling it, bunching it. Her mind is too full. </p>
<p>It nearly all pops when a woman comes around the corner and draws her hands up. "Scarlet, my dear, I was looking all over for you." She goes to her daughter and reprimands her for running away. But then she finds Jimmy's eyes as Reina had found them so many times before. The blonde woman, lithe, delicate, with drooping eyes, intones like a fresh-cut lily. </p>
<p>Reina steps away to make room. They talk between themselves and she suddenly realizes she is just an audience. Whatever scene she performed with Jimmy is done and the curtain has fallen. Thankful for her sandals with their flat soles, Reina turns almost noiseless from the reunion. </p>
<p>Peter must have watched the exchange because he begins to walk with her through the airport. She has to scrunch up her cheeks to not bawl. </p>
<p>"It's tough," he comments and holds something up in his hand as she paces. "Look, here's enough money for a hotel room and a plane ticket. We're tight, tight on cash. But I was raised right and you don't let a woman go wandering on her own."</p>
<p>Reina stops because his kindness hits her full in the chest. She gingerly takes the money from his large hand and sets herself. </p>
<p>"That means a lot," she breathes. She's surprised she can still breathe. For a moment, she looks back at where Jimmy and the blonde woman were. There's only space. Faceless strangers fill it up. </p>
<p>Peter sighs. "He adores Charlotte. And he adores his daughter too." He fiddles, as if for once unsure what to do with all his size. But Reina only nods:</p>
<p>"As any good man should."</p>
<p>With her bag over her shoulder, she says goodbye to Peter. A hard determination draws her step. It's what keeps her from the bathroom and the privacy of sadness. </p>
<p>A line of payphones sits near the entrance to the hotel. She occupies herself inside one of the stalls. </p>
<p>To her left and right are a man and woman, divulging their lives. She slides her index fingers under both eyes and tells herself she will not cry, despite the dark lacquer of the receiver which seems to want to drown her. </p>
<p>She dials the only number she's ever memorized and shakes along the tone. In the few seconds before, she's trying to rehearse what she will say, how it will go. </p>
<p>The line picks up and she chews at her nail. Her voice wavers into the silence as tears pluck fresh into her eyes:</p>
<p>"Mamá? Can we talk?"</p>
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